


The Drive Was Pretty

by shiptoomuch



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amnesia, Angst, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 36,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiptoomuch/pseuds/shiptoomuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard never expected to ruin this between him and Jim the way he did. He never expected to be pushed to this point.<br/>He also never expected Jim to wrap a car around a tree and forget the last four years.<br/>It's just one mistake after another for Leonard McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I've been working on this idea for a while and I hope it turns out well!

Leo’s heartbeat matches Jim’s.

Well, really, it matches the beep of the machine that monitors Jim’s heartbeat. It’s not really different, but at the same time, it really is. Jim’s chest rises and falls slightly and it’s the only sign they’ve had of his life for two months. Two months of holding slightly warm hands and staring at eyelids that are sealed shut. 

Most everybody’s given up at this point, but Leo can’t afford to. He can’t move on because Jim was his moving on. He’s already moved to Jim. He can’t move from him.

Not yet. “Jim, please.” He begs quietly in the room that’s too white, too clean, too stark. The balloons and flowers have stopped coming almost completely. Only a vase of tulips that gets replaced every few days remains. Yellow tulips from Winona who doesn’t know what else to do for her son so close to death.

They’ve been holding him away from it for two months. Teetering on the edge of life and death and he doesn’t seem to be fighting either way. “Jim, I need you to come back to me. Please.”

It’s the same story every day of Leo’s life. He sits by the bed whenever he can, makes excuses to stop by the room whenever he can while he’s working. When he’s off for the day, he sits with a book, holding Jim’s limp hand in his own work-worn one. He doesn’t know what else to do at this point. So he begs, he begs when no one else is around and there’s machines and a comatose husband to listen. His ring shines on his own finger. Jim’s sits in a box on the table by the bed. They took it off when his hand was broken and it would have been dangerous. No one’s thought to put it back on him. “God, Jim.”

“You need to stop this. He’s gone.” Christine walks into the room with a cup of coffee for both of them. She sits pristinely in the chair next to his and shakes her head. “You know what they said, Leonard.”

Leo runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “He might never wake up and if he does, he’ll definitely have amnesia.” He quotes. Everyone quotes it constantly and he doesn’t know what good it’ll do, really. Jim is not going to give up on him. He promised he’d never give up. “I don’t care. I can feel it. He’s right there. Right there. Just under the surface and I can get him.” He squeezes Jim’s hand. “I have to get him back.”

Christine shakes her head and puts her hand on his shoulder. “And what if he never comes back? Will you let go? Can you?”

“He’ll come back.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re asking, Chris. He. Will. Come. Back.” Leonard reprimands her and she shrinks back slightly but is still obviously not willing to back down. “He will.”

They sit in silence after that and the tension is palpable between the two of them. Leo feels bad, he does. Christine is his best friend. His only friend that doesn’t have anything to do with Jim, really. She’s all he’s got anymore, really, and he’s obviously hurt her now. “I’m sorry, Leonard. I know you love him.”

“More than anything.”

“You will have to let go, eventually.” She sees him get tense and defensive again and she puts her hands up. “I mean, maybe. The chances aren’t looking so good but there’s always the chance that he’ll come back. What I’m saying is that if he doesn’t, you need to have a plan for coping. I won’t see you turn back to the bottle again.” She leans over and pats Jim’s shoulder. “Pretty sure it’s your fault he hasn’t yet.”

Leo smiles softly at Jim. She’s right, of course. When he and Jim finally got together, Leo was completely distraught over his father’s death and Jim made him promise not to destroy himself like that again. Now, when it’s Jim that he’s losing, he can’t bring himself to even look at the bourbon that sits on the shelf in their apartment that is too empty to live in. “Yeah. You know I could never let you down, Jim.”

Christine leaves the room after about five minutes. She’s got to meet Roger for dinner with his parents. She leaves him with only a pat on the shoulder and a slightly pitying glance that he’d loathe coming from absolutely anyone else. He doesn’t particularly appreciate it from her, but he knows not to fight it.

He’s alone in the room. Not alone, really. Jim is there but he’s not there. He can’t talk, can’t smile that ridiculous smile or wink at Leo with those dumb blue eyes. He can’t hold his hand.

His hand. Leo starts in his chair and he wonders if he’s imagining it. He wonders if the tightening fingers are just another figment of his imagination. He pulls his hand away and Jim’s clenches into a fist.

That’s definitely not his imagination. “Jim?” He gasps. The hand clenches a little and he can practically see Jim fighting to surface. “Nurse!” He bolts out of his seat and sticks his head into the hallway. “Come on, dammit! He’s waking up!”

Everyone in the hallway stops. They all know about Jim, of course. They all know about Leonard McCoy, the neurologist with a husband in a coma. A nurse drops a tray and immediately starts scrambling to pick it up. Another nurse rushes past him and into the room to start checking vitals immediately. “Jim, come on, open those eyes for me.” He stands away from the bed, knowing he’ll be thrown out if he gets in the way.

Suddenly, Jim is gasping and his eyes fly open. He tries to speak, but it’s raspy and not discernible. Leo pours him a glass of water from the pitcher that’s always on the table and holds it to his lips. “It’s alright, Jimmy. I’ve got you.” Jim drinks it greedily and his eyes are full of confusion as he finally breaks out of the dizziness that comes with waking up from a coma and takes in the scene around him. 

“Bones? Where am I?”

“The hospital, Jim.”

Jim looks at him like he’s crazy. “Why?”

“You were in an accident.” Leo finds himself checking Jim’s pulse in his wrist and he doesn’t remember how his hand got there but there it is. Jim’s heart hammering out at a rate that is probably too high to be healthy, but is obviously quite understandable. “You’ve been out for two months, Jim.”

Jim nods and Leo wants to say more, but he’s being pushed away by a brunet male nurse. “We have to ask you a few questions, mister Kirk, for our evaluation.”

“Alright, sure.” Jim tries to sit up, but he wavers slightly and the nurse pushes him back down.

“Don’t sit up. You’re not ready for that quite yet.”

“Yet he’s ready to answer questions about his life?”

“You know why we have to do this, McCoy. We’ll ask him now and then we’ll ask again in two hours.” The nurse brushes him off before turning back to Jim. “What is your full name?”

“James Tiberius Kirk.”

“Hometown?”

“Riverside, Iowa.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-four.” Jim answers confidently. Everyone in the room draws in a sharp intake of breath. “What?” He says.

Leo feels his heart deflate in his chest. He should’ve expected it, really, but it doesn’t mean he was any sort of ready for it. He takes a deep breath and speaks directly to Jim. “You’re twenty-eight, Jim.”

“No.” Jim glances around wildly. “No, I’m not. I am twenty-four. I was born in 1985 which makes me twenty four. You’re my best friend, Bones. You know that.”

“It’s 2013, Jim.” Leo says dejectedly. He sits back down in his chair and listens dimly as they continue to question Jim. If Jim doesn’t remember the last four years...

The nurses and Doctors leave after what feels like an eternity and then it’s just Jim and Leo again. He doesn’t quite know what to say. It’s been two months and apparently Jim remembers nothing. “Bones?” Jim reaches out and brushes Leo’s arm with his fingertips.

“Yes, Jim?” Leo can’t help but sound uncertain. He’s got no idea what Jim remembers at all.

Suddenly, whatever Jim was about to say leaves his mind and Leo watches at the blond’s eyes land on his left hand. Leo wants to tuck it away behind his back. He wants to hide it away. It’s too late, though. 

Jim purses his lips together and doesn’t speak. Neither of them move for what seems like forever. “You got married?” Jim asks finally. His voice is slightly tight. “What’s she like?”

Leo grips the armrests on the chair to keep himself from leaving or screaming. Of course Jim’s forgotten their entire relationship. They only got together at the end of 2009. “He. Not she.”

“Oh. What’s he like?”

“He’s dead.” Leo lies. “He died a few months ago.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yaaaay ear infections!

“Oh, Bones. I’m so sorry.” Jim frowns and reaches out to touch Leo’s arm again. “I can’t believe you had to go through that.”

-

Leonard Horatio McCoy’s life ended on a thursday night. Really, it had been a slow decline for about a year but this? This was the end. “Leonard.” 

Christine’s voice was slightly panicked but the woman was still put together as ever when she rushed into the room he was doing meaningless paperwork in. It was boring, but he was already in a bad mood, so how bad could the paperwork make everything? Christine crossed over to him and spoke to him quickly. “You need to come with me.”

“What do you need, Chapel?” He doesn’t look up from the endless charts and release forms. “I’m working here.”

Christine sighed and touched his arm with an uncharacteristic softness. “You need to come down to the Emergency Ward. It’s Jim.” 

Leo’s heart stopped. He slowly closed the file that he was holding and placed it on the counter. “This had better not be some kind of joke.” He stared Christine in the face with a hardness that seemed to frighten her slightly. She didn’t say anything and he got his answer.

-

“It’s fine, Jim. I’m getting over it.” He shrugs and pulls away slightly from Jim’s touch. The other man is sitting up now and looks slightly hurt at Leo’s unwillingness to touch him. 

“What was he like, if you don’t mind me asking?” Jim stares at Leo with these wide blue eyes that make him look like maybe he’s not really twenty-eight. Maybe he still is twenty-four and they all got it wrong. 

“He was great. Really great.”

-  
Leo reached the emergency room and he didn’t exactly remember how he got there, but he was standing in the middle of the waiting room with a panicked feeling hanging around him. It’s nearly palpable in the air. He doesn’t quite know what to do or who to talk to for a moment and he doesn’t need to because one of the RN’s is coming up to him and taking him by the shoulder. She directs him down endless halls wordlessly and he follows in equal silence.

He hadn’t started crying yet. That would come later, when he saw Jim and their fates were said outloud.

He had wished for a chance, but not this...

-

Jim sits up expectantly. He winces slightly and brings his hand to the bandage on his head. “Well, that’s painful. Go on.” He waves his other hand toward Leo.

Leo wants to push him back down. To tell him to rest and not move because it’ll hurt him more. He wants to coddle and take care of him but they’re just friends. He decided that. “He was the most amazing person, Jim. He absolutely lit up a room and he was an idiot but I couldn’t live without him.”

“He sounds great, Bones.” Jim answers softly. Leo can see it in his eyes: the pain, the jealousy, the idiotic love because at this point in Jim’s brain, he’s in love with Leo. He’s got a crush on him that neither of them will talk about for a while. “I’m assuming I was your best man?” He masks it and the look is gone from his eyes for the most part.

Leo laughs and shakes his head ruefully. He looks Jim in the eye. “You were the best man, Jim. You were the best man there.”

-

When the RN stops and stares at him before walking away, everything is all wrong. It’s wrong because he was standing outside an ICU. It was wrong because when he looked in, he saw his husband laying there, clearly just out of surgery. He was covered in bandages and barely recognizable. “When will he be awake? When can I talk to him?” He said to the hallway, not anyone in particular on the receiving end of his question.

“We don’t know, Leonard. I’m sorry but it looks like he’ll be out for the foreseeable future.” Geoffrey M’Benga, one of the other neurologists at the hospital and a friend of Leo’s answered. Leo jumped because he didn’t see the other man come up to him.

A thought dawned on Leo. “Why didn’t anyone tell me earlier? Why did I have to wait until after surgery was finished to find out?” He turned on Geoff accusingly. “I am his next of kin. We’re married. I deserve to know.”

“We told his mother and everyone agreed that it would be best not to have you insisting on performing the surgery on him yourself.” The other man is unshaken by his fury. “You would have freaked out and not let me do a good job. We both know that. Everyone knows that.”

Leo sighed in resignation and nodded. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Will he live.”

“We don’t know.”

-

“What else have I missed? In case anyone else comes to visit, I’d like to know what they’re talking about.” Jim apparently picks up on Leo’s discomfort with the subject.

“Well, Gaila and Scotty have two kids.” Leo grins at the thought of the two redheaded girls. “Twin girls. Leonora and Leia. You love them.” 

He watches as Jim’s face goes from delight, to indignation. “Wait. They named one of their kids after you and not me? What even?” He frowns heavily and tries to cross his arms, wincing in pain slightly at the movement.

Leo rolls his eyes. “In her defense, Gaila did not want to name one of her children after her ex boyfriend.” He looks pointedly at Jim. “Really, it’s only logical.”

“You sound like Spock.” Jim giggles. “Say, what’s up with him and Uhura? Did they finally tie the knot?”

“Yeah. Their wedding was so beautiful. You were best man for that.” Leo nods at him. “And Nyota may or may not have made me her maid of honor.” He chuckles at the memory of Jim teasing him for weeks on end about it. In the end, though, nobody cared that Leo was a man doing a woman’s job. It was all about Nyota in her white dress that looked absolutely stunning on her.

Jim cackles (winces) and uncrosses his arms. “Well, I bet you looked lovely in your dress.”

“Oh screw you, I wore a suit and I looked amazing.”

-

“We don’t know if he’ll even make it through the night, McCoy.” Geoff looks incredibly sorry when he says this, even though it definitely wasn’t his fault. Leo knows that he’s the best there is (beside himself, of course) and he did everything he could. “If he does, though, he’ll be in a coma for a while. We can keep him alive on life support but it’s risky and he may never wake up. We’re looking at serious amnesia if he does.”

Leo decided he hates the word ‘if’ because it’s not fair that he ended up with an ‘if’ after everything he’s gone through in his life. Jim was supposed to be his one sure thing. It hadn’t been so sure lately, but he was still never an ‘if.’ Jim was an all or nothing kind of person. “He’ll make it.”

“McCoy-”

“No, Geoff. He has to make it. He promised he wouldn’t leave me. Not like this.” Leo takes one last look at Jim before finally turning away. “How did this happen?”

-

“So is that it? Two kids and two weddings that I missed?” Jim searches Leo’s eyes as if he knows that he’s holding back something. “Four years, and that’s it?”

“Your mom married Chris.”

“Shut up.”

“For real.” He shakes his head. “You know how everyone thought it wouldn’t last? Well, apparently those two are too bullheaded to listen to anyone. Perfect for each other in the end.” He laughs when he thinks about the wedding and how both Winona and Chris looked like they were proving something to everyone. They loved each other immensely, though. It was obvious at the wedding when they thought no one was watching. “I’ll show you the pictures when we get home.”

“We?”

Leo stops himself. He hadn’t meant to-Of course Jim would think that they didn’t live together. Leo had been married, for Christ’s sake. “Yeah. You’ll be moving in with me so someone can keep track of you and make sure there are no more side effects. You’ll be under observation, naturally.”

“Oh, okay.” Jim’s smile seems half-faked and nervous.

-

“He ran into a tree, Leo. There was nothing anyone could have done. There was no trace of alcohol in his blood, though, so it must have been an outside thing.” Geoff frowned. “You two weren’t fighting, were you?”

Leo sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Well, yeah. We had a bit of a fight earlier tonight but I didn’t think that he was that upset over it. Not upset enough to run into a tree, at least. I don’t even know where he was going. He was going to spend the night in.” 

Geoff gives him a sad look. He met Leo’s eyes and put a hand on his shoulder. “There was a suitcase in the backseat of the car, McCoy. Wherever he was going, he was going to stay.”

Leonard Horatio McCoy’s life ended on a Thursday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feedback appreciated!  
> tumblr: fabtrek


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was a crazy emotional day omg. Seriously, weird.  
> BUT I GOT TO SEE MY BESTEST FRIEND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SIX MONTHS GOD BLESS

Jim manages to sit up in bed unassisted with minimal pain for the first time in five whole days. He frowns at the empty room. Leo had been there to stay with him the past few days but he’d had to start working again and now Jim was left alone.

Leo. His Bones. His best friend in the whole world. Jim smiled at the thought of him. He was in way too deep, he knew. He figures that the Jim who didn’t lose his memory, the Jim who lived those four years that he couldn’t remember, got over Leo. He must have, in order to be best man at his wedding.

Didn’t make it hurt any less to have to deal with it now. Jim hates himself for forgetting everything. He loves Leo. He loves him so much it hurts.

Leo had to go through everything that he did...It kills Jim to think about.

“Jim? Oh, Jim, I am so glad you’re awake!” Gaila snaps Jim out of his solemn reverie, bounding into the room and wrapping her arms around the blond. Her red curls get in his face and he hugs her back. “Oh, sorry, you’re probably in pain, right? I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t be. Really, it’s so inconsiderate of me to-”

“Shut up, Gaila.” Jim smiles fondly at the woman who appears to have grown up a lot since he last remembers seeing her. “Really, it’s fine. It doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as it did.”

The read head grins at him and twiddles her thumbs nervously. Jim’s interest is peaked when she glances behind herself and then turns back. It’s uncharacteristic for her. “What’s wrong?”

“I just wanted to introduce you to someone, well, two someones.” Gaila smiles brightly. “They’ve been dying to see you.”

Suddenly, Jim catches on. “Well, bring them in! I’ve been dying to meet them, too.”

Gaila nods and hurries out to the hall. Jim can hear her talking in a hushed voice. “Remember, Uncle Jim is hurt so we have to be gentle. Don’t jump on him and don’t talk too loudly. Got it, girls?” It warms Jim’s heart to hear his friend talking to her daughters. He hears some giggles and then two strawberry blonde heads of curls run into the room. 

“Uncle Jim! Uncle Jim!” One of the girls shouts and tugs at his hand. “I heard you got in a accident!” 

Jim stares in wonder down at the twins. “Yeah, I did. I bumped my head and now I can hardly tell you apart anymore. Which one of you is Leo?” He looks between the girls and points at one of them. “Is it you?”

She giggles into her hand. “No, silly. I’m Leia. You can tell cuz I look older.” She sticks out her chest and puts her hands on her hips. “Leo has to listen to me because I was born before her.”

“Only by ten minutes!” Leo stomps her foot and punches her sister in the arm. “Don’t be a meanie.”

Jim watches them argue before lifting his eyes to meet Gaila’s. The mother is smiling bemusedly and shaking her head. “They’re amazing, Gaila. They’re going to be beautiful just like their mom.”

“Watch it, Kirk. I’m a married woman.” She holds up her hand and waves her wedding band around. “You can’t hit on me anymore.”

Jim holds his hands up in defense. “Hey! I remember that wedding, at least!” Jim smiles. “I meant it in the most platonic way possible.”

Gaila shakes her head and Jim marvels at how much she’s grown. Last he remembers, she was just a slightly ditzy newlywed who liked partying a bit too much. Now the woman who stands in front of her is mature with two three year old daughters and the same spark as before, but more controlled than it was before. It makes his heart ache slightly because he’s missed so much and he didn’t fully realize it until now. “Of course you do, Kirk.”

One of the girls, Leia, he thinks, has crawled up on to the end of the bed and Gaila is clearly about to scold her but Jim waves her off. The little girl crawls up a bit so that she’s sitting by his knees. She focuses her big green eyes on Jim. “Uncle Jim, you missed our birthday party and Leonora wanted to know if you have birthday presents for us?” 

Jim laughs and ruffles her curls. Leia squeals and tries to get away but he pulls her closer and starts tickling her. He kicks him a little and he cries out a bit in pain. She pulls away with wide eyes that are starting to become tear-filled. “Hey, don’t worry. I’m fine.” Jim reassures her quickly. “Perfectly fine. Now, as for your birthday presents, I’m afraid that’s going to have to wait until I’m out of this place. Think you can wait that long?” 

Leia nods and looks over at Leonora, who also nods. “Yes, Uncle Jim.” The identical twins answer in unison.

They sit and talk for a few more minutes and Jim pretends that he didn’t forget the two little girls. It’s surprisingly easy, honestly. Three year olds don’t have much to be remembered. He giggles with them but underneath he longs to remember what it must have been like when they were even younger. He knows he must have held them when they were babies. It’s painful but he knows that he might never get it back. 

Scotty shows up with a grin and all the enthusiasm for life that Jim’s always known him for. “Hello, Kirk. Got yourself into a bit of an accident, didn’t ya?” He laughs at himself. “Sorry we weren’t able to get in here earlier, but it’s been absolutely crazy, tea parties and all.”

Jim laughs out loud at that because never in his life did he expect Montgomery Scott to talk about tea parties in a serious tone. “Really, Scotty?”

“Oi! I’ll have you know that tea parties are a very important part of our day!” The Scot points a finger at Jim. “Shame on you, James Tiberius Kirk.”

Jim laughs again. “Don’t worry, I don’t judge. Tea parties can be a ton of fun, I’m sure.”

Gaila looks at the two boys and rolls her eyes. “You two are ridiculous. It’s like you’ve missed nothing at all, Jim.”

“I’ve missed enough.” Jim says seriously. “Wouldn’t do to live like that, now would it?”

Scotty walks over and claps Jim on the shoulder briefly. “That’s the spirit, laddie.” He scoops up his daughter off the bed. “Now, I hate to cut our visit short, but there are two little girls who promised their grandma they’d come over for dinner and we don’t want to disappoint her, now do we?”

Jim fake pouts. “Well, if this isn’t the most disappointing thing on the planet.” 

Leonora and Leia wave goodbye to Jim. Leia’s draped over her father’s shoulder and Leo walks beside him, holding his hand. Jim’s heart clenches at how much a family man his friend has become. “Bye, Uncle Jim!” They chorus together. Scotty winks and turns to leave. “I think Spock and Uhura are going to be stopping by later.” He throws over his shoulder. “See you!”

“Bye, Scotty! Bye girls!” Jim waves goodbye to them. He turns to Gaila, “Are you going with them?” He asks.

“No. I promised Nyota I’d go out to dinner with her, so I’m going with her after she comes and visits your sorry ass.” She smiles and checks her watch. “They should be showing up any second now. They said 5:30 and you know how Spock is about punctuality.”

“It would be illogical” Jim mocks his formal friend, “to profess one time and show up at another.” He falls into a fit of giggles.

“That is most unamusing, James.” Spock’s voice makes Jim jump and gasp. He clutches his chest and laughs some more.

“Jesus, you’re going to give me a heart attack.” Jim gasps out. His eyes fall on the couple now standing in the room. “Hello Nyota. Hello Spock.”

Nyota crosses the room to Jim and gives him a small, albeit slightly awkward, hug. She pulls away and Jim can see that her eyes are slightly wet. “Hello, Jim. You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

“Are you crying, Ny?” Jim lays a hand flat over his heart. “Are you feeling alright?”

Nyota laughs a watery laugh and smacks his shoulders. The tears start for real and she attempts to cover her face to avoid embarrassment. If there’s one thing Nyota Uhura doesn’t do, it’s cry in public. “Shut up, you idiot. We were really worried about you. I thought you were gone forever, Jim. We all did.” She sinks into the chair by his bedside. “If you ever scare me like that again, I’ll cut your balls off.”

Jim reaches out and takes her hand into his own. He glances at Spock, who merely nods his consent. Jim can’t help but start to cry too because this is Nyota Uhura, rock solid killer lady who could kill you with a few well-placed words. This is the woman who rebuked his flirts time and time again and who became one of Jim’s best (and most unlikely) friends in the world. It kills him to see her crying and he wants nothing more than to stop it. He loves her, in a completely platonic way. She’s the closest thing to a sister he’s got. “Hey, I’m fine. I might be missing a few years up here, but I’m going to be fine.”

“You better fucking be.” She wipes at her eyes and comes away with mascara on her fingers. “Verdammt.” She mutters under her breath.

“Well, good to see you still speak German when you’re upset.” Jim laughs and pulls his hand away. 

“Geh zum Teufel.” She spits at him.

Jim laughs. He knows what that one means, at least. She’s said it to him enough times that he’ll never forget it. He looks at the wedding bands on Nyota and Spock’s fingers and after his visit with the Scott family, he just has to ask. “So, are you two planning on having little Spocks anytime soon?”

Everything in the room suddenly goes quiet and tense. Uhura looks down at her lap, long black hair falling in long sheets to cover her face. He sees her hands fidgeting. Spock seems to stand up straighter, if that’s at all possible. Gaila sighs and shakes her head at Jim. “What? Did I-”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry.” Nyota looks up. Her face is sad and she opens her mouth to speak, but fails. Jim gapes as the quick tongued woman fails to come up with something to say. “We-Spock and I-” Nyota stutters uncharacteristically.

“Nyota is unable to have children.” Spock says finally. “It is...regrettable but we now find ourselves in the position of prospective adoption.” He nods at Jim. “Do not worry, we are not upset with you. Leonard informed us of your mental condition and all it entails.”

“Oh, don’t call it a condition.” Nyota cries. “Really, you make it sound so dramatic and awful.”

“It kind of is awful.” Jim admits. “I’ve forgotten so much, it seems. Your wedding, Leia and Leonora’s birth, Bones’ wedding. It’s insanity.”

Nyota and Gaila exchange glances when Jim mentions Leo’s wedding. “Oh, don’t worry, Jim. You’ll get used to it all and be back at it in no time.” Gaila assures him.

“Can I just ask one question?” Jim looks down at his lap. “Just one thing.”   
“What is it, Jim?” Nyota says quietly. “Anything.”

Jim twines his fingers together. “Was I over him? Was I over Bones when he got married or did I have to stand through that thing and still be in love with him?”

Nyota’s sigh is answer enough for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY SO MUCH SORRY  
> GAAAAH


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

“You’re going to have to take this slowly, Jim. Physical therapy isn’t something you can rush through.” Jim’s assigned therapist, Hikaru Sulu, crosses his arms and meets Jim’s challenging eyes. The two men stare each other down and Leo knows who’s going to win this fight but Jim’ll be damned if he doesn’t try.

“I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.” Jim speaks like a petulant child.

“So I’ve heard.” Sulu rolls his eyes and walks over to the parallel bars. “If you could bring Mister Kirk over here, McCoy.” He nods at Leo, who complies easily. Jim sits in his wheelchair, obviously upset that no one is listening to him. Sulu taps the bars and starts explaining the days’ exercises. “Alright. So, first we’re going to be starting with walking. You didn’t break your back or legs so it shouldn’t be that much of a struggle, but since you did have brain damage and you were out for two months, we can’t guarantee that it’ll be easy.”

Jim nods slowly. “So, I just have to..walk?” He tilts his head to the side. “That’s all?”

Leo can’t help but let out a bark of laughter because he’s seen enough people go through this process to know it isn’t particularly easy. It shouldn’t be that hard, like Sulu was saying, but Jim hasn’t walked for two months. “Be careful, Jim. Sulu here likes to get a laugh in while he’s working and he has my permission to laugh at your sorry ass.”

“You’re going to need the support of these bars in the beginning.” Sulu steps away from the bars and holds his hands out to Jim. “Now, come on. Let’s get started.” 

Jim gets to his feet with the help of Sulu and Loe and is soon grasping the bars for dear life. “I take back everything I ever said. This is hard.” He struggles to take step after step but he doesn’t give up. Leo watches in amazement as Jim reaches the end of the bars quicker than most people would. His forehead is covered in a slight sheen of sweat and he nearly topples over, but he makes it. Leo and Sulu rush forward to catch him when he starts falling. He ends up with his arms wrapped around the blond’s waist, Jim’s head resting on his shoulder.

“Geez, kid. Be careful.” Leo laughs and puts him back in the wheelchair.

“Let me go again. I can do better, I know I can.” Jim starts to push himself out of the chair but Leo pushes him back down.

“Slow down there. Sulu?” He turns to the physical therapist. The man nods and gestures to the parallel bars.

“We probably have time for one more go, then I don’t want you to strain yourself anymore. This is the hardest day, of course, but it’s not going to be an easy road to get you back to where you were before, Jim.”

Jim nods. “Yeah, in more ways than one.”

-

Jim lays back in bed and yawns. He turns his head to smile sleepily at Leo. “You’re the best friend ever, you know that, right?” 

Leo shifts in his seat uncomfortably and nods. Jim staring at him like that looks like all those mornings they woke up together and the sunlight would catch his eyes just so-

No. He cannot afford to think like that anymore. He’s nearly lost Jim so many times. He’d rather have the kid as his best friend than as his nothing. He grips the arms of the chair and wills himself not to lean forward and kiss that silly look off Jim’s face. “Why do you say that, kid?”

“You’re here for me, Bones. A lot of people probably would have ditched out and you have every reason to but you’re still here.” Jim nods and pulls the blankets up. His pain meds are obviously taking effect. “I really appreciate that, you know?”

Leo doesn’t reply because he can’t. He nods and tries to swallow the lump caught in his throat. He can see it in Jim’s eyes. He can see the love and the trust and everything that Leo lost. Jim looks young, despite the fact that he’s not twenty four anymore. Jim looks like that kid again. Leo pulls a book out of his bag and tries to resist the urge to watch Jim drift off to sleep. He hasn’t earned it, he doesn’t deserve it.

“Bones?” Jim’s sleepy mumble breaks Leo away from the world of Guy Montag burning books. 

Leo hums affirmatively and doesn’t take his eyes off the pages even though he’s definitely not reading anymore.

“Do you still love him?”

“Who?” Leo looks up a little.

Jim nods towards Leo’s hand. He knew, of course, who Jim was talking about. Leo swallows and nods. “Yeah. I suppose I always will.”

Jim nods and Leo can tell that he’s upset. “Was I there for you? When it all happened?”

“Why on Earth are you asking that, Jim?”

Jim shrugs and looks slightly abashed. “I don’t know, Bones. You’ve been acting weird around me, is all. Are we still best friends?”

Leo sighs and closes his book. He meets Jim’s eyes finally and the blue is staring through him like it always has, lit by something in the kid that no one really understands. “Honestly? Not really. I don’t know what it was, but we kind of” Leo pauses for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase this, “drifted. We’ve hardly spoken in the past year, Jim.”

Jim’s eyes go wide and he looks like he wants to say something, wants to fight it, but he doesn’t. He resigns himself to laying back and nodding. He pulls the blankets up to his chin and curls in on himself. “Alright, Bones. I’m tired.”

Leo’s heart takes up residence in his feet. He wants to climb into that bed and hold Jim close and whisper that it’s all lies, lies, lies.

It is a lie. Not in the way that he wants it to be, but it is a lie. He knows exactly why they barely spoke for so long. He knows precisely why Jim had a bag in the backseat of his car.

He can’t think like that anymore. This is his second chance.

He slides his ring off for the first time in three years and puts it in his pocket.

-

It's a week and a half later when Christine manages to drag him out of the room to have dinner after she finds him asleep in the chair. “Come on, big guy. You need to get some food in you before you continue to pine over your own husband.”

Leo nods numbly and follows her through the halls to the cafeteria. She takes one look at him and sits him down at a table in the corner before leaving to get them both food. Leo stares down at his hands. He wants to tell her that he can do his own shit and get his own food but he knows better than to fight with Christine Chapel.

“We’re going to talk, Leonard. No evasions, none of your tricks. I’m going to ask you and you are going to answer me.” She looks him dead in the eye. “Alright?”

“Fine.” He sighs. “What do you want?”

“You still love Jim, right?” Christine prods, already knowing the answer.

“Yes. More than anything.” Leo stirs his bowl of soup and tries to keep himself from crying. “So much.”

“Then why do insist on acting like you never did? Why are you lying to him?” She puts her hand over his, stilling his motion. “Why?”

Leo puts his face in his hands and breathes out the words he never wanted to admit, not even to himself. “Jim was going to leave me and he had a good reason to. This is my chance to start all over again and get it right this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we learn part of the story

Christine stares in shock at Leonard. She doesn’t know what to do at first, just watches him eat his soup slowly. He resolutely refuses to look at her. She finds her voice quickly and asks the question that’s sticking in her throat like a popcorn kernel. “What happened?”

Leo shakes his head. “We’d been fighting for about a year.” He takes another bite of his soup and Christine could kill him because he says it like it’s nothing even though she knows he doesn’t actually feel that way. She knows that he cares so much about it. 

“Why?” She presses. “Why were you fighting?” She doesn’t mean to seem nosy. Really, she only cares about her friend. She wants to help him fix whatever this is.

Leo puts his spoon down and twines his fingers together, playing with his thumbs. It’s a nervous habit of his. He sat exactly like that when he was thinking about asking Jim out and then again when he told her his plan to propose to him. She thinks it’s strange that the situation still has to do with Jim but this time it’s completely different. “I started drinking again.” He mumbles. It’s nearly inaudible, but Christine catches it.

It’s not that Leo had sworn off of alcohol forever, no he could never have done that. The thing was that he hardly ever drank when Jim wasn’t around and he never got drunk anymore. She knew that what he was saying was that he was going out and breaking his promise to Jim. He’d been down that road before and the blond man had saved him and made him promise never to do that to himself again.

Leo had agreed and they all thought that was the end of it. “When?” Escapes Christine’s lips.

“I used to tell him I was on call all the time. I’d be out all night and by the time I got home, I’d had enough painkillers to make the hangover seem like exhaustion.” Leo scrubs a hand across his face which is a mask of sorrow and attempted indifference. “He didn’t find out for months, Christine. I acted like things were fine for months.” His voice is full of remorse and regret.

Christine is about to ask how he found out but then she remembers. It had been about a year ago and Jim showed up at the hospital in the middle of the night with a snack for Leo. She remembers seeing him there and being so confused as to why he was delivering something for his husband who had gotten off work four hours prior. She remembers watching Jim talking to one of the receptionists and his face falling before he stormed out of the hospital.

She hadn’t thought anything of it, it being two in the morning after a long shift. “So, that’s when it started to go downhill?”

Leo shakes his head and laughs bitterly. “No. We’d hardly been speaking for the whole time before he knew. I don’t know what happened, we just...fell apart.” He picks up his spoon with no apparent intent to actually start eating again. He looks Christine dead in the eye. “I fell apart. I fell away from him.”

Christine’s head spins with the information she doesn’t quite understand. “Why? Why did you start drinking again? What happened?”

Leo slams his hand down on the table suddenly. It shocks Christine because he hadn’t seemed angry before. He was just sad and resigned. It’s as though his mood does a total turn for the worse because suddenly his eyes are fiery and mad. “I don’t fucking know, Chris. I don’t know why I did it.” His voice is too loud and angry for the cafeteria and soon people are looking at them oddly. No one in the room moves or says anything for an eternity.

Christine grabs Leonard’s hand and pulls him to his feet. She leaves the bowls on the table, knowing that neither of them were planning on eating anyway. Looks like a vending machine day. “Come on. We’ll talk about this in your office.” She marches him out of the cafe, ignoring the lingering stares from their colleagues. 

They make it to the neurology wing, but Jim’s room is in the same hallway as Leo’s office. Christine should have known they’d never actually make it to the office. Jim’s voice calls out to them from his room and they both whip their heads around to see Jim sitting up in his bed, leaning forward slightly, and talking to Nyota.

Leo’s heart stops in his chest when his eyes meet hers. She was always Jim’s one confidant through everything. After Leo, she was the person who knew the most about him. Leo supposes that she probably knows more now than ever before because Jim definitely stopped telling him things. All he got for that year were desperately whispered confessions under the blanket of night.

She knows. Leo knows Uhura knows. The look that she gives him burns him to his very core. Jim told her everything before the crash. He wouldn’t be that surprised if she was the person he was going to go stay with that night. His mother lives too far away and Scotty has kids so that would leave Uhura and Spock’s place.

She glares at him slightly but it’s a fleeting expression that flits across her face before disappearing. Clearly, she’s trying to keep things good for Jim. He wonders why Uhura hasn’t told the blond everything yet. “Bones! Come in here! Uhura showed up and woke me up from my nap.” He gestures at the raven haired woman, who nods gracefully.

She rises to her feet and hugs Leo. Nyota kisses his cheek lightly and it reminds him of when they were best friends. Hell, she made Leo her maid of honor over Carol or one of her sisters. They were close and he ruined it.

If only she could forget that like Jim did.

He catches himself thinking it and he gets sick. Sure, he had wished for a miracle to save his marriage with Jim but he didn’t want what he got.

And now he wishes it on Nyota Uhura, of all people? Despite her hard exterior, Nyota remains a good and kind hearted person underneath to people she trusts.

He lost her trust and he can’t wish himself out of it. “Hello, Ny. I didn’t know you were stopping by today.” He speaks honestly but feigns the friendliness that makes it seem like they’d been speaking recently, not like this was the first time he’d seen her in a year and a half.

“Oh, well, you know I can’t stay away from this place lately.” She laughs easily and returns to her chair. “I’ve just been catching up with Jim.” 

Jim waves his hand. “Oh please. That’s true if by ‘catching up with’ you mean helping me catch up on the lives of everyone I know.” He turns to Leo. “You’re going to sit with me while I catch up on Breaking Bad, I hope you know.”

Leo nods numbly and squeezes a smile onto his face. “Yeah, sure, kid. You’ll freak at the ending.”

Christine clears her throat and interrupts the tension that everyone in the room seems to feel but Jim. She nods at Uhura, who returns the gesture kindly. “If you don’t mind, Leonard and I were in the middle of a conversation that is actually quite important.” She smiles at Jim. “I’ll have your best friend back to you in a jiffy.”

She leads Leo out of the room and down the hall to his office. She shuts the door and sighs before sitting in the chair at the desk. He crosses to his own swivel chair behind the desk. “And here I thought that maybe I’d be getting out of telling you the whole sad story of my life.”

Christine shakes her head seriously and taps the desk. “No. I’ve been through enough with you, Leonard McCoy, that I know you freak out and flip shit if you don’t talk through your issues. From what I’ve heard, this conversation should have happened a long time ago.”

Leo slumps in defeat. “Fine.” He starts picking at a loose strand on the sleeve of his shirt. 

“So, why did you start drinking?” She leans forward and props her elbows on her knees. “There’s got to be something that set it off.”

“You really do get right down to business, don’t you?” He sighs. “But since you asked, nothing. I cannot pinpoint one reason that I started again. I think it was all just getting to be too much, you know? I got promoted, the adoption agency was being a great big pile of shit, everything seemed kind of pointless and the bottle was just there one night.” Leo shrugs and rubs his eyes.

“Leonard, you are diagnosed with depression, did you ever think that’s what probably caused it?”

Leo nods repeatedly. “He was always there when I got bad. He’d know before I did, it seemed. I’d wake up in the morning and he’d just know that I wasn’t going to have a good day.” He starts picking at the string on his shirt again. “The one time he wasn’t there was the one time I couldn’t deal with it anymore.”

Tears start falling down his face at this point. They slide along his nose and Christine watches them. Some fall into his lap and some slide down his chin and make the journey into his collar. “It was just..there and it seemed like it could solve everything.” Leo’s voice is watery and tight. “I didn’t want to. I really didn’t. I couldn’t help myself for some reason. Jim was out of town and I didn’t move from the kitchen floor all weekend. I scrubbed up on Monday and tried to be my normal self but I couldn’t stop it at that point.”

Christine doesn’t say anything.

“I couldn’t drink in the house. Jim was there and I had fucking promised him I wouldn’t do that anymore.” Leo’s self-hatred is evident in his voice and Christine wants to tell him not to feel so bad, but she’s never really been a fan of lying. “I promised him and I did it anyway. I went out nearly every night and drank until I couldn’t remember anything. I slept on park benches and any place I could find because I knew I couldn’t go back home to Jim.

“We stopped talking during all that. It was my fault because I felt so fucking guilty that I couldn’t even talk to him anymore. He found out, though, and we started talking but only to fight about everything. He wanted me to stop but at that point I didn’t care. I had already lost him in my mind so the bottle was all I had left. I started drinking at home again and sleeping on the couch.” Leo wipes the tears from his face and laughs humorlessly at himself. “God, I was such an ass.”

“Leo, I-” Christine starts to comfort her friend but he cuts her off.

“I think the worst was when he’d try to get me back by acting like nothing had happened but it was so desperate it made me sick.” He shook himself, as if doing so would make it all like it never happened. “It made me sick because I had taken the most amazing person in my life and reduced him to nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay? I feel like this chapter kind of sucked, blame Mustard, she's DISTRACTING ME  
> I hope you liked!  
> comment, like, share, whatever.  
> my head hurts.


	6. Chapter 6

“Did you ever try to get help, after everything fell apart?” Christine glances at the clock, knowing that she’ll soon have to go on shift. She just has to ask the last question.

“I did. He was talking to a divorce attorney and it scared me out of it.” Leo stands up from his desk and crosses to the door. “I stopped and it was hard but it didn’t fix anything. I had already ruined it.” He opens the door and turns expectantly to Christine. “Now, I’ve got to go talk to Geoff about when Jim’ll be released and you have work to do, Nurse Chapel.”

Christine walks past him, leaving with only a brief hand on the shoulder as a farewell and a reassurance that things might turn out well. Leo knows it’s hopeless, but it does help to an extent. It says everything she needs to, everything from “I’m sorry you have to go through this” to “You can’t keep hiding. You messed up. Own it.”

Geoff is waiting for him in his office when Leo shows up. He sits in the chair and it feels weird to be waiting for a doctor to tell him something he already knows. Jim should be released soon, but watched. “We just need to do a few more tests today and then you’ll be able to take him home. You could go home tonight if you wanted but tomorrow morning might be more advisable.” Geoff hands him the charts and paperwork. “He’s doing well, despite the obvious amnesia problem. His physical therapy is going well, he doesn’t seem to have any other issues with his brain although headaches will probably be a problem for a while.”

Leo nods. He knows that if he had his choice, Jim would be at home right now, even if that would probably be the worst thing for his sanity on the planet. The spare bedroom got made up three months ago when Jim had decided that sleeping in their old bedroom wasn’t working for him anymore. “I’ll ask Jim what he wants to do.” He rises to go speak to the kid, but Geoff stops him with a worried glance. “What?”

“I’m worried about you, McCoy. This whole lie that you’re perpetuating cannot end well.”

“It’s my choice. It’ll be fine.”

“There’s always the chance that he’ll get his memory back. Or someone will tell him.” Geoff warns. “There’s always the chance that you’ll make it worse.”

Leo shrugs. “Can’t get much worse than it was, can it? At least this way, I have him for a little while.”

Later, when Leo is standing in the corner of the room while Jim talks to Uhura, he can’t stop thinking about Christine’s face. When he told her, she looked so...disappointed in him. Her face was pure pity and he felt like she let her down. He let everyone down. They were always the couple that was going to make it. “Rock solid.”

“What was that, Bones?” Jim’s eyes are on him and Uhura has turned around in her chair.

“Oh, nothing.” He hadn’t even realized he said anything out loud. “Just thinking.”

Jim winks at him and it makes Leo hate himself. “Well, don’t let us interrupt your thoughts.”

Nyota collects her bags and rises from her chair. She leans over and kisses Jim on the cheek tenderly. “I must be on my way. Spock and I are having dinner tonight. Tell me if Leo causes you any problems and I’ll kick his ass.” It’s a joke to Jim but a promise to Leo all at once. “Bye!”

“Bye, Ny! I’ll call you later.” Jim calls after her retreating form. He turns back to Leo with a grin spread across his face and light in his eyes that practically hurts Leo to look at. “So, what’s up, Bonesy?”

“You can go home tonight.” Leo says quickly. “Or tomorrow morning. Either one, really. It’s your choice.”

Jim fucking lights up at that. He sits up in his bed and bounces a little. “Really? Oh, I want to go tonight. I’ve been cooped up for so long I just want to get out of here and breathe in the outside air and sleep in a bed where I’m not hooked up to machines and constantly watched.” He nods at Leo. “Yeah, I want to go home tonight. I can’t wait one more night.”

Leo watches him ramble about how awful it is to be in here where he has to eat hospital food and the nurses hardly like to talk to him and he just wants to walk around and stay up late watching tv on a couch with his best friend in the whole world. “Alright alright, slow down there, kid. I’ll go tell them that you’re ready to go tonight and then we’ll get everything ready.” He points at Jim sternly. “Don’t you dare think about getting up and doing things. You’ll be active enough once we get out of here and I have no control of your actions.”

-

They leave the hospital at about seven that night and Leo swears a few of the nurses get teary eyed. Jim gives them all hugs, dressed in sweatpants and a sweater that used to fit but now hangs off his much skinnier frame. He promises to come visit, not that he has a choice with all the followup appointments he’s got. Leo waits by the car for the blond to finish chattering away with a fond smile on his face. “Come on, idiot. It’s not like you’ll never see them again.” Leo waves Jim over and he smiles and practically skips over. Apparently he’s doing really well in physical therapy. 

“Fare the well, hospital people. It’s been fun.” Jim waves one last goodbye before sitting shotgun in the car. He sighs and leans back against the seat. He sighs out his relief. “Finally. I was going crazy in there.”

“What happened to ‘it’s been fun’?” Leo prods jokingly. He starts the car with his heart beating too fast to be healthy. Jim’s coming home for the first time in two and a half months. He got the miracle that he wished for, albeit not what he actually wanted, and Jim is coming home and he’s smiling at Leo again.

He really should be happier about this.


	7. Chapter 7

Jim gets home and he looks like he fits perfectly and like he doesn’t belong there at all. He’s a walking contradiction in the home they shared that felt so empty for a year and a half, even though they were both there. Jim looks around the room silently, bag in hand and Leo is worried for a minute that Jim remembers suddenly. Jim turns around with a grin on his face, “Great place you got here, Bones.” He stands there awkwardly and looks around himself. “Where should I put my stuff?”

Bones shakes himself out of the slight daze he was in and gestures at the short hallway to his right. “Um, just down here.” He leads Jim to the spare bedroom. It’s sparsely furnished, with only a bed and a desk. An empty picture frame sits on the bedside table. “Here it is.”

“Home sweet home.” Jim breathes out with a small smile. “It’s great, Bones. Thanks for letting me crash here.”

Leo wants to say “well, your name is on the lease, too” but he doesn’t. He bites his tongue and smiles. “I’m going to watch some movies, if you want to join.”

Jim yawns and shakes his head. “Honestly, I’m pooped. I’ve been laying down for two and a half months and I’m tired, it’s the dumbest thing.” He laughs and shakes his head. He gestures toward the closet. “Is my stuff here?”

“Yeah,” Leo says, “It’s all in there, color coded like you always hang up your stuff.”

Jim walks over to the closet and inspects it all. He turns around and beams when he sees that it is exactly how he always does it. “Thanks, Bones. It’s seriously great of you to put all that work in for me.”

Leo’s stomach clenches because, really, it wasn’t any work. Jim did it himself a few months ago. He turns to walk away to the living room for a night of watching movies and probably a date with ben and jerry but Jim stops him with a hand on his arm. “Really, Bones. Thank you.” Jim’s eyes are hopeful and so full of love that Leo wonders how he took so long to notice that Jim loved him the first time.

He muses that he’s never been good at noticing things that aren’t explicitly visible or pointed out to him.

He gets through Singin’ In The Rain, Thor, and is halfway through Avengers when Jim pads out to the living room, bare chested and wrapped in a blanket with disheveled hair. “You alright, kid?”

Jim sighs and runs a hand through his hair, bringing it to rest on the back of his head. He winces slightly. “Headache. Can’t sleep.” He walks over to the couch and sits next to Leo. “What are you watching?”

“The Avengers.” Leo picks up the bowl of popcorn from the table and is suddenly jealous of Jim’s blanket. It’s cold. “It was one of your favorites.”  
Jim sits up straighter. “This is the long-rumored Avengers movie? Oh, this is so awesome.” He steals some of the popcorn. “Wow, the guy who plays Captain America is hot.”

Leo chuckles and tosses popcorn at Jim’s head. “His name is Chris Evans and you are such a slut.”

Jim gasps in mock horror. He places a hand over his heart and flutters his eyelashes. “I am sure I have no idea what you’re talking about!” They both giggle together, only half watching the movie, and it feels like old times again. Back before anything happened between them. Two friends.

It goes silent between them and Leo is hyper aware of Jim’s impossibly blue eyes boring into the side of his face. He stares at the screen and tries to watch the movie but Jim’s distracting him too much for him to really take in any of it. He turns to the blond and raises an eyebrow.

“You took off your ring.”

Leo looks down at his hand. “I think it’s time for me to stop lingering, you know?” He actually hates not wearing it, but he can’t stand the way that everyone looks at him now. It hangs on a long chain around his neck, tucked into his shirt.

Jim stares at him for a long time and considers his next words for a long time. “Do you think you’ll ever love someone again?” Jim clasps his hands together in a moment of complete lack of confidence. 

Leo rubs a hand over his face. He looks at Jim, who seems to sense it and meets his eyes with a look of total vulnerability. “I think so.”

Jim scoots closer to Leo on the couch and takes one of his hands in both of his. Leo freezes and holds his breath while Jim just looks at him. “Bones, I’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

“Could be dangerous.” Leo manages to choke out.

“I know.” Jim laughs, full of nerves. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the accident and what if I hadn’t made it? What if it had been you and not me?” Jim squeezes his hand and sighs. “I wouldn’t want to miss a single moment, Bones. I don’t want to waste another moment. I can’t let myself be scared anymore because you or I could be gone tomorrow.”

Leo doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. He just stares at Jim and blinks. Jim takes a deep breath and starts leaning in toward Leo. He’s half an inch away from his lips when he whispers. “I can’t live another minute not knowing.”

Leo doesn’t stop him as he connects their lips. He doesn’t move for a second or two but then he’s moving against Jim’s lips, kissing him exactly like he knows he loves to be kissed. Jim runs his tongue along the seam of his lips and Leo gladly opens up, quickly gaining dominance. Jim’s hands come up to grip Leo’s shirt, leaning against him and sighing.

Leo forgets it all for a few moments. He forgets that he and Jim haven’t done anything like this in nearly a year. He forgets that the only kisses they shared were desperate attempts at fixing something irreparable. For a few moments, he has Jim back. His Jim, his husband that he loves more than anything anyone could think up. He kisses him with abandon because he’s got him back.

Then he remembers. He remembers that, to Jim, this is their first kiss. This Jim doesn’t remember anything about them being together. This Jim thinks that Leo is just his best friend who was married to another man.

Leo gasps and pushes Jim away with just a little bit too much force. He stares with wide eyes at the man who’s now slightly sprawled out on the other end of the couch, looking like his heart has shattered into a million pieces. Leo runs the back of his hand across his mouth and looks away from Jim. He can’t look at those blue eyes that are trained on him. “Jim, I-”

“Bones, don’t.” 

“It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, Jim.”

Jim covers his face. “Please, don’t do this to me.”

“I want to be with you, Jim. It just doesn’t feel-” Leo searches for a word that fits.

“Honest?” Jim supplies.

Leo wants to brush it off because he’s not cheating on anyone, and that’s what Jim will think. It doesn’t feel honest, though. That’s what he’s being here, dishonest. “Yeah. I’m sorry. It just-it hasn’t been enough time.”

Jim nods slowly and turns back to the tv. “I understand, Bones. Just know that I will always be here for you, however you want me. I’m here.” He kicks Leo’s foot. “And I trust that you won’t break my heart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you thought it was about to get happy....sorry.  
> I mean, not really, but still whatever.


	8. Chapter 8

“I won’t say anything. I’ll let you do that.” Pike stares Leo in the face and doesn’t move his gaze from him. He’s never been one to skirt around problems or let people avoid him. Chris likes to let people know. “I trust you will do that, at least.”

Leo swallows and can’t pull his eyes away. Chris and Winona had shown up earlier in the day and Jim had been sleeping so he took them out to lunch. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell them what he did. Better they get it all from him. “I don’t know if I-”

“You can’t let him live like this. You cannot lie to him, Leonard.” Chris stirs his coffee and only breaks eye contact to add sugar and take a sip. “He will find out eventually and it’ll only be worse if it doesn’t come from you.”

Leo knows he’s right, of course. If Jim finds out from someone else that Leo’s been lying to him this whole time, that Leo is lying to him again, it’ll be the end. Jim would walk away without a backward glance because he hates lying. Hates it more than anything else on the planet. “I know.” He picks at the french fries on his plate.

Winona reaches across the table and rests her hand on Leo’s arm. “Leo, you know we love you like a son. Really, we do.” She smiles at him and it’s slightly uncharacteristic for her to be so sweet, “But Jim comes first. He’s my son and I’d hate to see him get hurt worse than he already has been.”

Leo accepts this. He and Winona had been close before everything went to shit but Ji had always come first. No matter how much she had been absent for part of Jim’s youth, the mother and son had always shared a bond. “I just don’t know how to do it.”

“You’ll figure it out. I suggest you do so soon.” Pike leveled him with his ‘father’ glare that he had down pat, despite the fact that he didn’t have any children of his own. Jim was his son enough. “I don’t want to hate you, Leo, but he will always come first for us.”

Leo looks between the couple. The love they have for Jim is strong and undeniable. Really, it had been inevitable that they end up together. Chris had been dealing with Jim since he was a dropout teen and Winona relied on him for so long that it wasn’t surprising at all when they admitted to being in a relationship. They found each other through a deep sense of caring for Jim and stayed together because they cared about each other.

Leo remembers their wedding vividly. Winona wore a simple gown and Chris wore a tux. Jim beamed through the whole affair, whispering to Leo about how “his mom and dad finally got married.” It was right around their first anniversary and Leo remembers being just as in love with Jim as the first day.

Leo just wishes that Jim could remember it.

“What’s your plan from here, assuming Jim doesn’t find out?” Winona questions. 

“I don’t know, honestly. He-he’s just like he was before everything.” Leo rests his head on his hand. “He wants to be with me and I’ve managed to keep him at bay without pushing him away completely but I don’t know how long I can do that. I don’t know if I even want to.” 

Winona laughs. “Well, it would seem you’ve got yourself into a real shitstorm, wouldn’t it? If you tell him, you can’t be with him and if you don’t tell him, you can’t let yourself.” She tilts her head to one side. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you and Jim just shouldn’t be together?”

Leo stares at her, unsure of how to really respond to that. “I need him.”

“What if he doesn’t need you?” Pike counters. “What if you aren’t the best thing for him? If you love him, really love him, you should be able to accept that.”

Leo finds himself speechless. Winona and Chris had always been supportive of Jim and Leo. They’d been thrilled when the two got married. 

Now they’re questioning whether or not the two should have ever been together. “Wait. I’m not following. Are you saying that I should just walk away?”

Winona shrugs and looks at Chris. “We don’t want either of you to be unhappy and this thing is only going to make you miserable. By the looks of the bags under your eyes, it already is.”

“We don’t want you to destroy yourself.” Pike frowns at his coffee. “We might seem like we’re jumping to conclusions and discouraging your relationship but we really just want you to be happy.”

-

“Jim! Your parents are home!” Leo yells out when he walks into the apartment after lunch, Winona and Chris in tow. “Come say hi.”

“Mom? Chris?” Jim runs around the corner and practically tackles the two adults in a bone crushing hug. “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“Didn’t tell me, either. And they’re going to be sleeping in my room.” Leo grumbles. 

Jim shushes Leo and turns back to his parents. “You came all the way out here from Riverside? You must like me or something.” He hugs them both again and kisses his mother on the cheek. He jokingly leans into Chris, who cuffs him on the shoulder.

“Don’t even think about it, kid. It can only end badly for you.”

“How long are you going to be here for?”

Winona leans around Jim to ask Leo. “Leonard, dear, when are you going to kick us out of your home?”

“Two weeks, tops.” Leo responds with a half-smile. “After that, I demand my bed back.” He takes their bags back to the bedroom and sighs out a goodbye to his nice comfortable bed. 

In the living room, Jim chatters away to his parents. “It’s so great of Bones to do this for me. I know I’m probably going to be an awful burden on him and he’s really so wonderful to take care of me while I’m still recovering.” He grins at the couple, who offer tight smiles.

Winona pats his hand. “Yes, it is quite kind of Leonard to take you in and make sure you don’t die.” 

Jim stares at them for a few moments. He takes in their linked hands and the way they seem to be happier than he’s ever seen the two of them. “I hate that I don’t remember your wedding.”

Chris waves him off. “Please. You didn’t miss much. It was a very low key thing. Only the closest friends and family. Not even a huge party.”

Winona hums in agreement. “It really isn’t something to be remembered.”

“Ridiculous!” Jim exclaims just as Leo walks into the room. “It’s a big deal and I demand that you show me pictures.” 

Leo freezes in his tracks, terrified. He makes eye contact with Winona, who obviously is thinking the same thing as him. 

Hardly any of the pictures of Jim from that night don’t include Leo. 

Jim was also wearing a wedding ring at the time.

“We’ll pull some up later and show you, Jim.” Pike finally says. “How have you been doing with adjusting to everything after the accident?” He changes the subject and Leo breathes a sigh of relief.

“It was hard to grasp at first, honestly. I felt like I didn’t know anything and everything was completely new to me. I was terrified. I have Bones, luckily, and he’s been helping me out a lot. He has been nothing but helpful and honest with me. Really, he’s been a complete blessing.” Jim locks eyes with Leo and he can tell that the blond is trying to convey everything he admitted to Leo two nights ago. “I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Winona frowns slightly, a slight wrinkle appearing in her forehead. Pike’s eyebrows shoot up and Leo can tell that they’re upset with him. He lied to Jim and the younger man so willingly believed him. He trusts Leo even though it’s all built on a total lie. “Come on, Jim. You’ve got Uhura and Scotty and all them too. It’s not just me.” He tries to direct the conversation away from himself.

It’s fruitless. “No, Bones. Don’t get all modest now. You’re the one who was there when I woke up even though you said that we drifted apart over the past year. You were there even though you had every reason not to be.” He fixes him in a serious stare. “That means a lot to me.” 

They sit in silence that stretches on infinitely long. Everyone stares at Leo and he can feel himself growing increasingly uncomfortable. He choses to look at Jim because at least the guilt he feels isn’t as bad as the utter disapproval from Winona and Chris. He offers up a smile to Jim. “Thanks, kid. I wouldn’t to be anywhere else.”

Jim straightens up in his seat and grins. He glows and Leo can only feel the disapproval from Winona and Chris grow. “Well, I think it’s time that I left you three alone, don’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Leonard.” Winona smiles sweetly-too sweetly at Leo. “Really, stay.”

-

It’s early when Chris and Winona finally retire to bed. They both start yawning at about seven and are on their way to bed by eight after a day of traveling. “We’re sorry we have to bail so early, Jim, but it’s been absolutely exhausting lately.” Pike claps his stepson on the shoulder and turns away. Winona kisses him on the cheek and then disappears into Leo’s room.

“I’m sorry. They really should have warned you.” Jim apologizes to Leo immediately. “They can be kind of-imposing at times.”

Leo shrugs and fluffs up the pillow on the couch. “It’s no problem. They have every right to come out and visit you.” He pulls his blanket up over his shoulder. “Would it have killed them to get a hotel?”

Jim touches his shoulder. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“Jim, I-”

“That’s not what I meant, idiot.” Jim slaps him upside the head. “I meant that I could take the couch and you could have the guest room.” He rolls his eyes and crosses to the armchair. “Really, stop assuming that I’m always trying to get you into bed.” His voice is cross but his eyes twinkle with mischief, letting Leo know that he’s not entirely serious.

“Well, sorry for knowing you too well.” Leo leers. “What did they call you in college again?”

“Captain Cock.” Jim winks. “Made me sound like a porn star. It was awesome.”

Leo wants to crawl under the couch and die a little.

“So, will you take the bed?”

“No.”

“I insist, Bones. You have work, I don’t.”

“You’re recovering from a fucking car crash and a coma, Jim.” Leo spits at him. “I am not taking your bed.”

 

Jim pouts at him and when it doesn’t work on Leo because he’s built up an immunity to Jim’s eternal pouting, he huffs and gets up. “I don’t know why you’re being such an asshole about this. I’m offering you a bed that won’t kill your back in the morning and you literally are being the worst person alive.”

Leo rolls his eyes so hard Jim thinks they might fall out of his head. “Go to bed, loser. You must be exhausted.”

Right on cue, Jim yawns. “I hate being in recovery. I get tired by, like, nine and I sleep basically all day.”

“No more partying for Jim Kirk.” 

Jim laughs and shakes his head. “No. I may be twenty four in here-” Jim taps his forehead. “but this body is too old for any of that anymore.”

“Good. Now I don’t have to worry about you getting into fights and dying on the streets.”

Jim stares at him with an unreadable expression for a few moments before walking over to him and bending down. He brushes their lips together briefly and quirks his lips up. “Thank you for worrying about me, Bones.”

Leo finds himself breathless from the most chaste of touches. “Don’t think about it too much, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAY PARENTS YAY WOOOO  
> I'm tired.


	9. Chapter 9

It’s a bad idea. A really bad idea.

Yet, here Jim is, with yellow flowers at a hospital. He offers the nurses and receptionists a small smile while he walks past them to Leo’s office.

Oh this is such a bad idea. He knows it, too. He should be at home and he knows Leo’ll bitch at him for getting out of the house when he’s recovering but once Jim gets an idea, he finds it hard to shake.

He stands in Leo’s office, the one that Christine directed him to when she too realized there was no stopping him. He places the flowers on Leo’s desk with a self satisfied grin. Something catches his eye, though.

Bones has a candy bowl. He looks around. No one will see him and he highly doubts he’ll notice that Jim took one piece. He picks up one of the chocolates in shiny wrappers. He doesn’t bother reading it, of course.

He pops it in his mouth, savoring the sweet and smooth taste of the chocolate. He chew is and realizes there’s a filling in the chocolate.

Strawberry filling. “Bones.” Falls out of his mouth without a second thought.

It’s too late, of course. Of all the things he’s allergic to, strawberries are probably the worst. He feels his throat start closing up and he gasps for breaths that are too small.

He starts to waver on his feet and all he can think is “Bones is going to kill me.” because he always warned Jim to be careful about his allergies. He really should not have touched the candy. He should have read the wrapper.

There are so many things he should have done but it’s a little too late for that. “Jim?”

Jim’s eyes snap open (when did that happen?) and he sees Leo standing in the doorway, looking extremely worried. Jim tries to ask him for help but his throat is closed and scratchy so he just gestures at the candy bowl. His eyes catch his hands and he sees that they’re puffy beyond belief. His tongue is numb.

“Dammit, Jim. Why are you even here?” Leo rushes over to his desk and pulls out an epipen. Jim assumes that it’s for Leo’s allergy to bees. He stabs it into Jim’s leg. “Why the hell did you eat a strawberry candy?”

Jim gasps for breath after his throat finally opens up again. He glares at Leo. “Like I did it on purpose.”

Leo groans and smacks his arm. “What if I hadn’t shown up? What if you were alone in this office, probably choking on your own vomit because you can’t be bothered to read a wrapper?” Leo is suddenly livid. He paces around his office and waves his hands angrily at Jim. “You could easily be dead right now. If I hadn’t gotten a headache and needed meds from my desk, you would be dead.”

“Well, I’m not.” 

“You almost were, Jim. You almost were.” Leo runs his hands through his hair and Jim realizes that maybe this isn’t about the candy.

“Bones, I’m so sorry. I-I should have looked. You’re right.” Jim smiles meekly at Leo. “I’m not dead, though. I’m right here.” He puts his hand on the side of Leo’s face. He knows that the older man said that he couldn’t do this but he needs to touch him, knows that it will ground him. “I’m right here.”

Leo looks meets his eyes and stares for entirely too long for Jim to not blush. He feels his face heat up. He doesn’t move his hand, though. He stares back and it’s a long time before Leo breathes out “You’re right here.” He leans in towards Jim and he tenses up.

“Bones, you don’t have to-”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I want to?” Leo raises an eyebrow and leans forward until their lips are touching. “I really do want to.” He whispers against Jim’s lips.

Jim feels like he could fly, could sing at the top of his lungs because this is his Bones and he just admitted that maybe he wants this as much as Jim does. 

It’s simple, and it’s not the first time they’ve kissed. It isn’t even the dirtiest kiss they’ve had.

It is, however, the first time it means something. It’s the first time that Leo says that he wants Jim. 

Jim presses forward and places his other hand on Leo’s jawline. He can’t help but smile into the kiss when Leo puts his hands on his hips. He presses himself against Leo and they kiss lazily, just taking their time. Jim explores Leo’s mouth with his tongue and Leo kisses him like they’ve been doing this for years. It’s weird, but Jim just takes it as being a tender mercy of the universe.

“Oh god. I am so sorry.” Christine stumbles on her way to turn around and walk out of the office. “At least close the door!” She shouts behind herself.

Jim pulls away and giggles. “You have work.” He steps away but Leo’s hands remain on his hips and the man looks slightly dazed. Happy, sure, but dazed.

He snaps out of hit, shaking himself slightly. “Yeah. Work. Dammit, kid, distracting me all the damn day long.”

Jim pats his cheek twice. “Don’t act like you don’t enjoy it.”

Leo is the one who blushes this time. “Shut up.”

Jim finally remembers why he came here in the first place. He walks the short distance to the desk and sits on it casually. He picks up the bouquet with a sheepish grin. “I got you flowers. That’s why I’m here.”

Leo takes them from him and pecks him on the lips. “Are you even real?”

Jim pinches Leo’s ass and he jumps. “Yeah. Pretty real.”

“Aren’t you supposed to pinch yourself to find out if something’s real?” Leo glares at him.

“Maybe I just couldn’t help myself.” Jim wraps one of his hands around the back of Leo’s neck and pulls him back down again for a kiss. He’s waited a long time for this, apparently longer than he can even remember, he’s going to milk it.

“Work, Jim.” Leo tries to pull away, but Jim doesn’t let him. “I have work.”

“Mm, I don’t care.” Jim mumbles. “I’m quite happy right here.”

Leo groans and allows himself to be thoroughly kissed for another minute. He turns around and sees several nurses scurrying away from the doorway. “I really hate you.”

Jim’s eyes twinkle and he laughs. “Somehow, I really doubt that.”


	10. Chapter 10

Sometimes, it’s easy for Leo to forget the hole he’s dug himself into. When it’s just him and Jim together, Jim’s arms wrapped around his waist, talking to him and smiling his perfect smile, it’s easy to forget that he doesn’t remember. It’s easy to forget the fact that Leo is lying to his beautiful boy. 

Because, really, Jim is beautiful. He’s got a scar right near his hairline and his hair is too short altogether because of the surgery he had to go through. He goes through days where he’ll get headaches so bad he goes pale and doesn’t get out of bed. His blue eyes are tired more often than not and he walks stiffly still. But he’s beautiful, all the same. He shines when Leo presses his lips to his cheeks. He bubbles over with excitement when he explains something to do with astrophysics or engineering that sounds like gibberish to everyone around. 

They go out for ice cream and Jim shoves his cone in Leo’s face so that he has an excuse to kiss it off. Leo glares at him and glances around them, but secretly he’s pleased. He makes up for it but grabbing Jim roughly and licking any traces of the desert out of his mouth. 

Jim may or may not drop his ice cream cone.

Leo falls in love with him.

He takes Jim to his physical therapy appointments, and Jim stumbles through some of the exercises, but he grins at Leo the whole time and chats away to a frazzled-looking Sulu about their dates. The trainer honestly looks like he doesn’t care but he knows that Jim won’t shut up about it.

Leo falls in love with him.

Jim falls asleep against him whenever they watch movies or tv together, pressed as closely to Leo as he can, small puffs of breath against the older man’s neck. When Leo tries to wake him up, though, Jim pouts and squeezes closer. “You’re a great pillow.” He says sleepily. “Don’t move.” 

Leo falls in love with him.

He’s a ball of energy in a tired body and Leo loves everything about him. He never thought it possible to be devoted to someone completely, but here Jim is.

He falls in love with the kid every damn day.

It’s too easy for him to forget that Jim doesn’t remember the last four years. It’s easy for him to forget those years, too. It all seems so new to him, even though he’s lived it before.

This time, it’s different because he knows what he’s doing. He knows exactly how not to mess it up.

Of course, with every good moment, there comes a bad one. With forgetting comes remembering.

Remembering comes in the form of Nyota being over at their apartment for dinner and shooting him sad looks across the room while Jim plays with his fingers. It manifests itself in Chris and Winona watching Jim cuddle up next to Leo and giggle at a movie. Remembering smacks him in the chest with a ring hanging on a chain around his neck.

He remembers it all and he avoids Jim. He works overtime, gets all his paperwork done and he doesn’t look at Jim because he knows he’s going to hurt him. He knows that he can’t live like this forever. He cannot lie to Jim forever and play happiness. 

“Jim, please, I’m tired.” Bones snaps at Jim one night. “Please.”

Jim shrinks away with an expression of confusion and hurt. “You’re still so in love with him.” He hangs his head.

For a second, Leo doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then he remembers that he told Jim he was married to someone else. He looks down at his chest and sees that the chain has slipped out of his shirt and the ring is in plain sight. 

Not for the first time, Leo wonders what would have happened had he not lied to Jim. He wonders what would have happened if he had told Jim that they were married and that Jim was angry with him. Would Jim have left, just like he was planning?

Part of his brain says that, yes, he would have, which is why Leo has to keep this going for as long as possible.

Another part of his brain says that, no, Jim would have been willing to forgive him because that’s the way Jim Kirk works.

That part of his brain used to be a lot smaller.

“Jim, I’m so sorry.” He tucks it back into his shirt. “I promise you, I want to be with you.”

Jim backs away and shakes his head. “No, Bones. I can’t be with someone who’s already married.”

“What if I’m married to you?” Almost escapes Leo’s mind but he holds it back and shakes his head. With shaky hands, he reaches behind his neck and unclasps the chain. He takes it off and puts it safely on the lamp table by the couch. 

“Jim, I want you. I don’t want him back, I want you.” He leans in with a careful hand. It’s wrong wrong wrong and he should fix this all right now, but he can’t stop himself. He can’t hold himself back.

Jim’s always been like a drug for him.

Jim sighs and presses his face into the hand. He closes his eyes and just...breathes. “I know you still love him and no matter how much you want to be with me, it’s not going to change that.” He says carefully. “I don’t want to stop this but I can’t live with only having part of you. There’s something missing.” He opens his eyes, which are impossibly blue and brimming with tears. “Please, Bones. Let me in.”

Leo’s heart breaks. He pulls Jim in close to him, cradling him against his chest. They sit like that on the couch. They’re impossibly close but still feel the need to get closer. Leo breathes in the scent that is purely Jim. It’s intoxicating and he never wants to move away. “I’m trying, Jim. I’m trying so hard.”

He considers telling him right then and there. Coming clean and letting the chips fall where they may. He almost does it. He opens his mouth to admit it all but then Jim does the unthinkable.

“I think I’m in love with you, Bones.” It’s mumbled into his chest and Leo feels his breath catch. 

He doesn’t move and Jim surely feels him stiffen because he starts to pull away but Leo doesn’t let him. “Oh, kid, that’s probably a mistake.”

“Can’t help it.”

Leo sighs and tightens his grip. “Well, then, I should probably tell you that I’m pretty far gone for you too.” 

Jim looks up at him and he glows. It’s one of the looks that would typically make Leo forget but it’s too late for that. They’re in too deep and he doubts he’ll ever be able to forget. He can’t forget that he loves Jim so much he can’t breathe sometimes.

He cannot forget he’s lied to Jim so much that he can’t tell the truth anymore. 

Jim presses his lips to Leo’s and it reminds him of the first time they said that to each other. It happened entirely too soon, just like this time around. They’d only been together for about a month but really it had been years in the making.

The difference? Leo hadn’t felt guilty that time.

They were the couple that got married too fast. They only dated for six months before Jim proposed. Another six and they were married. Everyone rolled their eyes and no one fought it because it was Jim and Leo. They were best friends and lovers and everything in between. They were the couple that everyone wanted to be.

Then they were the couple no one wanted to be.

-

Chris corners Leo in the kitchen the next morning with a frown. “Look, I know you love Jim and I know you’re making him happy right now, but I can’t stand here and not say what I need to say.”

Leo’s heart pounds in his chest and he nods. He tries to still the shaking of his normally steady hands. “Chris, I know.”

“Do you?” Chris asks, arms crossed. “Do you know that the look I see on Jim’s face now is the same one I saw on his face the first time around? Do you know that I know what Jim was like when you stopped talking to him? I know you two managed to keep it a secret from pretty much everyone else, but Winona and I had to see our son falling apart because he just wanted to help you and you refused to let him in.”

“I want to fix this. I wish I had never done it.” Leo admits for the first time, even to himself. “I wish I had just been honest.”

Chris puts a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “I know you do, son. We all do. We’ve all lied to Jim here. We’ve all decided to go with you on this because believe it or not, we want you two to survive. So we’ve left it to you.” Chris shakes his head and lets out a mirthless chuckle. “It was probably a mistake but I trust that you two will be able to work out whatever it is you end up with.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO, LOVELIES!  
> SORRY IT'S BEEN SO LONG, THINGS GOT ABSOLUTELY CRAZY!!  
> HOPE YOU ENJOY!

“You really need to tell him.” Gaila bursts out as soon as Jim makes it safely to the bathroom of the Panera. Nyota, Scotty, and Christine all give him the same glare. Spock looks apathetic as ever. They all sit squished into a booth at their local Panera and she glares at Leo intensely.

“You don’t understand, Gail.” Leo groans. Christine gives him a look.

“She does.” The blond states easily. “I had to explain to them the whole thing before they flipped out and told him.” She turns back to her breadbowl of soup easily like what she said wasn’t a huge thing.

Leo gapes at her. Christine’s always been one of his closest friends. She’s been supportive and funny and she gets his humor better than most people excluding Jim. Leo trusts her. 

Well, he trusted her. “Are you kidding me? Now everyone knows my life?”

Spock raises eyebrows. “It was quite evident that something of that nature was happening in you life at the time, Leonard. How it affected your marriage to James was more well hidden.” He nods at Leo. “We are, however, your friends. We will stand by you.”

Leo shakes his head. “No. You guys are Jim’s friends. You’ll stand by him in the end.” He meets Nyota’s eyes specifically. “Don’t pretend it’s going to be different.”

He resigned to that fate a while ago. If (when) Jim finds out everything, they’ll side with Jim and he’ll maybe have Christine or M’Benga. He figures it fits. He made his bed, may as well lay in it. 

“No, Leonard, I promise we won’t-Hi Jim!” Nyota starts but is cut off by Jim coming back. He looks distant and Leo knows that look. He knows that look and it absolutely terrifies him.

Jim is writing again. Which means Jim remembers something. “Does anyone have a pen?” He says absently, pulling a napkin out of the holder and tapping his fingers on the table. Spock pulls a pen out of his pocket and hands it to Jim. “Thanks, man. I was just in there and it suddenly came back to me-the story for my next book, I mean-and I just have to write.” He stares resolutely down and scribbles furiously.

Before the accident, Jim was a renowned author. He’d written two books and was talking about another that he had mapped out on his phone. Sadly, the accident had happened and while Jim still knew how to write and remembered his first book, the phone had been destroyed and there was no way to get that plot back. Leo just assumed he’d start writing something else.

Jim remembers, though, and it’s terrifying. If he’s started to get his memory back, then Leo knows they don’t have much time left together.

Of course, he might never remember everything about Leo but chances are that he will. He’s already remembered one of the most important things in his life and he remembers little bits of things with Gaila’s family and Chris and Winona every day. 

It’s only a matter of time before he gets his memories of being married to Leo back. “You remember it, Jim? Really?” He tries to peak at the scribbles on the napkin but Jim is just as protective of his stories as he always was and practically throws himself on top of it. “Are you seriously not going to tell me? I thought you trusted me.” He fakes being appalled.

It’s a joke, honestly. Nothing more than a simple joke meant to poke and prod at Jim for giggles. If they were alone, that would be the only reaction. They aren’t alone, though, and Leo can practically feel everyone around them tense and glare at him. Jim doesn’t seem to notice, so Leo makes the decision to ignore them.

It wasn’t even his idea to do this. Jim had simply gotten restless and insisted on seeing their friends again. Leo didn’t want that but he couldn’t deny him.

He and Jim had been wrapped up in their own little world after Chris and Winona left after only about a week. They had two weeks of pure simple bliss. They ate together, sat together on the couch and cuddled, and then went to bed in separate rooms because as much as Leo enjoyed being with Jim again like they were before, that was the one thing he refused to do.

He loves Jim more than air. 

Which is why he feels crippling guilt every time he looks at him. He loves Jim, sure, but he loves his Jim. He loves the Jim he married, the Jim who would wake up next to him with sleepy smiles and ask for pancakes with a sleep-slowed voice.

Hell, he even loves the Jim who stared at him with unreadable eyes from across a room and who moved out of their room and always looked like he was on the verge of saying something, but never did. He loves the Jim who grew to fit with Leo, even when they were broken, they fit.

This Jim, this Jim makes him feel like he’s cheating. This Jim is happier, more carefree, and he doesn’t know what Leo did to him, could do to him again if he wanted to. This Jim is happy to just be with him.

It’s not the same person he’s in love with and he should have realized that. He’s cheating on his husband...with his husband.

And if that isn’t the most confusing thing in the world.

-

They get home from the lunch and Leo wants to crawl into bed and sleep until he can’t anymore. He wants to dream of nothing at all and forget everything that’s ever happened to him.

“Trust me, it’s not as fun as it sounds.” Jim supplies and Leo is confused at first until he realizes that he said that out loud. “Forgetting. It sucks, man.”

Leo feels guilty immediately. “Oh god, Jim. Sorry.” He reaches out to pull Jim into his embrace. The blond comes easily and tucks his head into Leo’s shoulder. “I forget sometimes, sorry.”

Jim tenses and starts trying to push away. Leo’s first instinct is to tighten his grip but he lets Jim pull away. “Bones. I can’t do this anymore.” He stares at his sock-clad feet and folds his arms. He looks young. Younger than Leo’s ever seen him. “I can’t pretend not to remember anything.”

Leo’s world crashes around him. This is the end, he’s sure of it. Jim remembers it all and this is the final moment of the fantasy he built for himself. His heart pounds out a heavy staccato in his chest and he braces himself for impact before croaking out, “What do you mean?” As if pretending he doesn’t know will stop it.

“When we touch, it’s familiar. I realized that the first time I kissed you but I took it as a sign or something because I was so desperate for you.” Jim mumbles. “But then I started remembering things. Fleeting moments of touching you or of you talking in that tone of voice that you always use when we’ve been kissing for too long.” Jim’s voice grows more confident. “I know that this isn’t the first time. It’s not the first time that we’ve been...together. We’ve kissed before, we’ve been together before, we’ve...” Jim’s voice trails off and a faint and highly uncharacteristic blush rises high on his cheekbones.

“Jim-” Leo starts to admit everything but Jim stops him.

“What I don’t understand is that you were married. You were definitely married, everyone says so.” Jim finally looks at him. “So, if you were married to someone else and you were still being with me, what does that mean? What was I?” Jim laughs bitterly. “I suppose I know, really. I was always desperate for you. I was always this pathetic kid with a crush. I guess that even after you got married, I was desperate for you.”

That’s when it clicks for Leo.

“Please, Bones, just tell me. Were we having an affair?”

Jim thinks that he was Leo’s mistress or something. He thinks that Leo was cheating on his husband with Jim. 

“I need to know. I need to know, Bones.” Jim sounds small.

“We weren’t having an affair, Jim.” Leo grabs his wrist and tries to calm the now jittery man. “We weren’t. I was faithful to my husband.” For once, what he’s saying to Jim isn’t a lie.

Jim stares at him. “We weren’t? Then why do I remember-”

“I just need you to trust me, Jim.” Leo shakes his head. “I know it sucks and you probably don’t trust a single thing I’m saying right now but you need to know that I was completely in love with my husband and totally faithful to him.” He sighs and takes his hands off of Jim to grip the ring on the chain. “Until the last day, I was in love with him.”

Jim is hurt, obviously. His face crumbles and while he’s relieved that they weren’t having an affair, it’s painful for him to hear about Leo being in love with his husband. He sniffles and it’s watery and weaker than he wants to be. “I don’t even know this guy’s name and he’s kind of ruining my life.” He tries to joke but it’s just sad.

It’s true, though, Leo never mentions the name of his husband and now he’s in the position of having to tell him. The truth is, Leo doesn’t even know his name. The guy never even existed, for christ’s sake. “Jay. His name was Jay.”

Jim closes his eyes and it seems almost like he’s testing out how it tastes to say when he utters “Jay” quietly. He obviously doesn’t like it. “Jay. Well, I’m beginning to think that Jay was it for you.”

Leo reaches out and grabs Jim’s wrist again. “No, Jim. I need you. I want you.”

“I think you’re just looking for a floatation device after losing him.” Jim whispers. “I think you think you want me but you cannot stop thinking about him.” He pulls away. “I’m going to bed. I’m tired and I’ve got a killer headache.”

Leo watches him retreat down the hallway and he wants to chase him, but he knows that Jim needs to come to him, not the other way around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry?


	12. Chapter 12

Jim’s first instinct when he wakes up the next morning is to apologize. He should apologize for walking away and getting angry the way he did.

It takes him all of two minutes to gather up the energy to do it. He steels himself and pushes out of bed with a slight groan. It’s been around a month, but he still gets sore. It’s to be expected, of course, the accident was pretty awful. 

He makes his way to the kitchen, feeling anxious the whole time about what Leo will say to him. He honestly doesn’t know what to say, himself. Thinking about it, he’s not entirely sure what he’s really apologizing for. He knows that what he remembers was real. He also knows that it does not make any sense whatsoever. 

Leo insists that he was completely faithful to his husband, yet Jim distinctly remembers sleeping with him. It’s one of the very few things he does remember, really. 

He shouldn’t apologize for that, should he?

He stands still in the hallway, debating just turning around and sleeping until Leo leaves for work in half an hour. He seriously considers it.

The final decision is made to go and at least talk to the other man like a real life adult. After all, he doesn’t actually want to lose him, does he?

No, he’s sure he doesn’t want that.

Leo is standing over the stove, making bacon by the smell of it. Jim laughs. “I thought you said bacon was the absolute root of all health problems in America and should be banned?” Jim puts his hands on his hips. 

Leo turns around with a guilty smile. “Well, I feel like a complete dick after last night, so I thought I’d make your favorites.” He gestures to the microwave with his tongs. “You just had to wake up before I could surprise you.”

Jim opens up the microwave to find two plates piled with pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs, obviously still waiting for the bacon. “Bones, I am so sorry.” He blurts out, suddenly feeling guilty for acting like such a jerk to someone who obviously cared about him.

“Don’t be. I-I should have been honest with you from the beginning of it all.” Leo waves him off with a serious expression and Jim can tell something has shifted. 

The blond nods and takes the plates out of the microwave for Leo to put the fried strips on. “It’s fine, Bones. I understand.”

“You shouldn’t have to understand, is the thing.” Leo says with a sigh. He takes the food from Jim and puts it on the counter. “Tonight. Dinner. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.” He takes Jim’s face in his hand, rubbing his thumb along the slight stubble. Jim looks into his hazel eyes that look green in the early morning light and he cannot help but feel nervous because he’s never seen Leo look quite so scared in his life.

Jim swallows thickly and nods. “Sure. I’ll get all gussied up for you.”

He knows something is wrong. He knows it but he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

-

Jim is almost ready for dinner, looking sharp in a crisp with button down, nice jeans, and a blazer. No tie, of course. He’s never really been a fan of ties. 

He nearly leaves the apartment without shoes on. He’s halfway out the door, keys in hand, when he realizes he forgot to put them on. He laughs at himself before dashing back inside to grab the nice but not too dressy black shoes.

Except that he only finds one. He can only find his right shoe. 

He wore this pair the other day for something but he could have sworn he put them away. He is the type to be very specific about where his shoes go, normally, but he had been really quite tired when he got home.

He rifles through everything in his closet just to be sure it didn’t get misplaced before looking around the room.

He checks under the table. No dice. The desk and behind the curtains yield the same results.

Finally, he checks under the bed, mentally kicking himself for not thinking of the most obvious thing on the planet. He peers beneath the large bed and there it is. His left shoe, sitting oh-so-innocently next to a shoebox that Jim’s quite sure he’s never seen before.

Probably just something Leo was storing in here. Jim hasn’t exactly been looking under beds or anything. It’s really none of his business, he knows.

Still, his curiosity gets the best of him and he pulls out the box. It’s a larger box, clearly made for boots of some sort. Fairly nondescript.

It’s what’s written on top of the box that catches his eye. He traces the black letters written hastily in sharpie. He reaches out to open the box but pulls back. Surely Leo wouldn’t want him snooping in something so personal...

“Wedding Photos” Jim whispers almost reverently, reading the writing. He tries so desperately to forget that he ever saw it, but justifies his snooping in the end by telling himself that he was the best man at this wedding, so he deserves a little peek into what it was like.

Hell, it might even help him remember something the way reading his old books had made him remember the plot of his new book.

He lifts the lid carefully, as if it will turn into dust if he’s not completely gentle with the cardboard.

On the top of all the pictures is a photo of Jim and Leo standing next to each other, beaming. Their arms are around each other’s shoulders and they seem to be laughing about something while the sun sets behind them. Jim smiles at it for a second, but really what he wants to see is pictures of Leo with this mystery husband of his. Jim just has to know what this guy looks like.

The pictures of him and Leo are nice and all, but it’s not what he’s looking for.

He goes through the stack of pictures of friends and family, all of them laughing and smiling. Winona and Chris even appear a few times. There’s one of Winona hugging Leo, tears in her eyes.

That one makes Jim smile softly. She had always liked Jim’s best friend, treated him like her own son. It makes sense that she’d be emotional at his wedding.

There are a few pictures of Jim talking to people, Leo talking to people, smiling couples, Jim and Leo talking to each other, endless pictures of things that Jim is just not looking for.

“Where is this guy, anyway? Did he not show up to his own wedding?” Jim grumbles, throwing some pictures of a cake down just a little bit too hard.

He gets through a few more images before he freezes. He stares at the picture in shock, not exactly sure what to do with what he’s seeing. His hands start shaking slightly.

The picture makes no sense.

No fucking sense at all.

It isn’t real, Jim convinces himself, eyes squinted shut. He opens them, willing the item in his hand to turn itself into something different but there it is.

A picture of Leo and Jim kissing. Holding onto each other and kissing. In front of a goddamn minister. With people clapping. 

He doesn’t want to, but he looks through the rest of them. Pictures of Jim and Leo putting rings on each other. Pictures of them cutting the cake. Pictures of invitations that say “You are cordially invited to the wedding of James T Kirk and Leonard H McCoy.”

He drops the pictures all over the ground at that one. Tears come immediately and he finds himself gasping for breath as he realizes that it’s all familiar. All of it. Everything that he didn’t know seems so obvious now.

Leo never had a fucking husband that died in a car accident.

Leo had a husband who was in a car crash, all right, but he sure as hell was not dead. 

Jim feels a multitude of emotions crash through him as he processes the fact that not only is he married to Leo, but Leo lied to him and told Jim that he was married to someone completely different, someone who was dead. Anger, confusion, anguish, and shock, among a myriad of other feelings course through his veins as he struggles to understand why. Why would Leo do something like this?

Almost like he never really wanted to be married to Jim.

The shock wears off fairly quickly as Jim gets downright angry. Leo lied to Jim, pushed him away, and then acted like they were just fucking meant to be. Not only did he lie to Jim, but everyone that he knows lied to him, too. Even his fucking doctor.

Obviously this is a subject that needs to be broached with care.

Obviously Jim is just a bit too angry to treat anything with care at this point.

He storms into Leo’s room, looking for what he knows the doctor must be keeping in there. He’s not the sort to just let go of things like that. Jim pulls open the drawer on his bedside table and there it is. A black velvet box sitting pristinely in the otherwise empty drawer.

Jim opens it and a platinum ring that matches Leo’s own sits in it. He picks it up to read the inscription, “I am my beloved’s. I choose my beloved. Eternity.” 

Jim scoffs at it. Apparently eternity means “until they forget that we were ever together because they were in a car crash.”

He fumes as he stares at the ring. Half of him wants to throw it across the room and scream and cry until someone finds him.

The other half has a much better idea. He slips the ring on his left ring finger and stares at the perfect fit. 

-

Leo arrives at home about twenty minutes later. He calls out for Jim, who has neatly put himself back together and erased any traces of his earlier crying fit. He walks down the hall easily with a grin on that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, not that Leo really notices.

Jim swings his hips slightly and grins. He pulls his husband in and kisses him slow and deep. When he pulls away, Leo’s pupils are blown and he looks more than slightly overwhelmed. “Hi, Bones. How was your day?” He says with a smile.

Leo has to physically shake himself out of it before responding. “It was okay, I guess, darlin’. I’m assuming you had a good day, based on the way you’re acting now.”

Jim sighs. “Oh yes, I had a fine day. You know, I thought I lost something earlier, but I found it. Good thing, too. It’s incredibly important. Not something I’d want to really lose, you know?”

Leo’s face becomes a mask of confusion. “What did you lose?”

Jim holds up his left hand. “Oh, nothing of consequence.” He spits out, suddenly going from sugary sweet to bitingly harsh. “At least not to you, it would seem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH I ATE FOUR BOWLS OF COCOA PEBBLES


	13. Chapter 13

Leo’s heart stops dead in his chest. He tries desperately to find words that will fix this, will make Jim stop looking so hurt and angry.

Well, not just angry.

Pissed off to high hell is more like it.

All he can manage to choke out is, “How did you find out?” He figures it was probably one of their friends not being able to take it.

Carol Marcus, maybe?

Jim rolls his eyes. “Please. Our wedding photos were under my bed.”

“Jim, I-”

“Save it.” Jim cuts off whatever plea Leo was going to make. “You lied to me, Leonard.”

Leo flinches at the lack of a nickname. He tries to blink the tears out of his eyes. It’s just a dumb name, he shouldn’t be this upset about it.

“You manipulated me and lied to me. And why? It’s not like you didn’t want to be with me. You still stuck your tongue down my throat every chance you got.” He spits his words at Leo with a fury neither of them knew he had.

Of course, it’s not like anything of this caliber has ever happened to either of them before. 

“I called Nyota and she wouldn’t tell me. Not surprising, really. If any of my friends had wanted to be honest with me, they would have done so by now.” It’s at this moment that the image of wrath cracks just enough for Leo to see just how destroyed Jim is by this. Leo sees a sadness that pierces through everything Jim has. The blond’s arms are crossed tightly in front of him, nails digging into his forearms as if holding on tight enough will keep him from falling apart completely. “I should have seen it, really. I was so naive to think that the people I trusted would be honest with me. Apparently four years changes a lot of things.” 

Leo stares at Jim. He stares at this man who looks so much like the love of his life. This man looks so much like the man who he married, lived with for three years, the man who avoided him for six months straight. The man that Leo still loves after everything that they’ve gone through.

But the man standing in front of him...he may be Jim Kirk but he’s not the one Leo fell in love with. This Jim Kirk is about four years behind what Leo wants him to be.

“Jim, please, just let explain.” He reaches out and places a hand on Jim’s elbow, begging him to allow him an apology.

Jim jerks away fiercely, all fury back in place. His blue eyes blaze with a cold fire that sears and burns Leo. “Don’t you dare fucking touch me.” Jim’s fingernails dig deeper into his arms, so hard that Leo is worried he’ll actually draw blood soon. Tears gather in his eyes as he shouts at Leo. “You don’t get-there is no way you’re going to win this one, Leonard. You fucked up. You fucked me up and there is no way I am ever going to let you try to do that again.” 

Jim is shaking at this point, tears streaming down his face as he obviously tries so desperately to stop them. He releases his arms and stares up at the ceiling, hands clenching and unclenching. The muscles in his jaw flutter as cries.

If this wasn’t happening, Leo would think that he looks beautiful.

That’s probably a sign of how fucked up this thing actually is. Even when he’s completely destroyed Jim, all he can think about is how in love they were once. All he can think about is himself. “Look, Jim, I’m going to say what I need to say.”

“Please. Just shut up.” Jim whispers.

Leo shuts his eyes and ignores him. “I was selfish.” He waits for Jim’s comeback that doesn’t come. “I was selfish and I lied to you because you were going to leave me. You had a bag packed in the backseat of that car and you were going to leave me. I couldn’t lose you, Jim.”

Jim’s head snaps down and he stares at Leo. His eyes betray the fury in his expression. His blue eyes are confused and hurt and they don’t look angry. Jim’s eyes look tired. Exhausted. “Please stop.”

“I lied because I panicked. I thought the only way to get you back the way we used to be was to start over.” Leo laughs at himself humorlessly. “It was a shitty idea, really. You’re four years behind me. Our timing’s off, now. I wanted to tell you but by the time I realized that, it was too late. We were both in too deep to fix it.”

Jim turns on him, this time not angry, but completely sad. “Why couldn’t you tell me? I don’t remember what happened, Leonard. I don’t remember. If you had told me, we could have fixed it.” 

Leo feels a glimmer of hope well up inside of himself. “Is it too late? Could we talk about this?”

Jim swallows and seems to consider it for a moment. “I don’t think that’s the best idea.” 

“Please.”

Jim shakes his head fervently. “No. You hurt me. I can’t even look at you without feeling like-” he pauses, seeming to be searching for the right word, “like I’m not enough. Even when I didn’t know, you made me feel like I would never be enough for you.”

“I never wanted that.” It’s true, of course. Leo never wanted Jim to feel like he was not good enough. He only ever wanted Jim to know that he loved him more than anything else. He wanted Jim to know without a doubt that he was safe with Leo. 

Leo fucked up. He acted like this Jim and the Jim that existed before the accident were the same person. The truth being that the Jim standing in front of him is younger and more immature.

At least, he was. At this point, Leo’s sure he’s fucked him up so much that Jim aged ten years in three hours. “I never wanted that.” He repeats.

Jim sighs at him and walks over to the couch. Leo is sure he’ll sit down but instead he slides the ring off his finger with only minor difficulty and places it on the table. He stares at the band resting on the dark wood for too short of a time before turning back to Leo. “I’m leaving.” He doesn’t look him in the eyes, instead choosing to focus his gaze on the man’s chest, where the ring hangs on a chain. It seems wrong now.

“What?” 

“I’m leaving, Leonard. I’m going to be staying with Carol for a while and then heading up to Riverside to stay with my parents.” He shrugs. “I know they lied to me too, but they’re my family. I almost get it from them. They always did like you.”

Leo stares at him and it’s all so broken. It’s like he went backwards rather than forwards. He’s back to Jim staring at him with hurt eyes. Jim leaving. His life ending. He opens his mouth to speak, to protest, to make this stop, but the words don’t come. He snaps his jaw shut.

“Don’t say anything. I’m leaving. My bags are packed.” He takes a deep breath, as if the words physically pain him. “The game is over, Leo. I lost. Please, just let me leave while I still can.”

Leo thinks he’s wrong.

No, Leo knows he’s wrong. It was never a game. Not for Leo, not for Jim, not for anyone who was unwittingly involved in this fucked up mess. Even if it was a game, Leo was surely the loser. He sabotaged himself in this and came out on bottom with no friends, no hope, and no Jim.

If this was a game, Jim was the goal he was trying to reach. 

What is Leo supposed to do when the only thing he’s ever wanted is leaving him. “Jim. Please, just give me a chance to talk to you. Really talk, none of this bullshit fighting.”

Jim shakes his head and an expression so close to pity flits across his perfect features. He looks old. Older than Leo’s ever seen him. “No” is a simple word that ruins everything Leo risked it all for. “No, I won’t let myself do that again.”

Jim walks out of the room and down the hall to his bedroom, undoubtedly to get his bags and walk out of Leo’s life forever. Leo stands in the middle of the apartment and looks around himself. It already seems emptier, and Jim hasn’t left yet. It looks emptier than it’s ever been. Even when they were just existing and waiting for the other shoe to drop, there was still something there.

Now? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.

Jim comes back with a large suitcase, a backpack, and a familiar shoebox. Leo’s heart feels like it might burst. He hasn’t looked at those in so long. Not since Jim took them all down and hid them. He subconsciously reaches out to the box. Jim smiles sadly and hands it over. “I thought you might want to keep these.”

“You don’t want-”

“No.”

“Okay.” Leo clutches the only remnants of what they used to have like a lifeline. “I guess this is it, isn’t it?”

Jim steps forward and presses his lips softly to Leo’s cheek. “Please. If you talk, I’ll break. Please just let me leave.” He whispers in his ear. “I’m sure we were happy once, Leonard McCoy.” He steps away and grabs the handle of his case again. “Goodbye.”

Leo watches Jim give him one last before walking out of the apartment with a final door closing. It’s not even a slam. It’s a soft closing of the door and Leo is confused as to how a click of a lock could ever sound so sad.

It sounds like an ending and he can’t live with that. He can’t live with the fact that he caused it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this hurt me.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am incredibly sorry that it's been so long since I've updated. School really has been crazy lately! I hope you enjoy this!

Jim’s heart races as the cab pulls away. He leans against the dirty seats of the yellow car and tries to keep himself together. No cab driver deserves that. Said driver does cast some strange looks back towards him, but no words are spoken and for that, Jim is grateful.

All he wants is silence. He wants to curl up and pretend that he didn’t just have his heart ripped out and torn to shreds.

Jim wants to wake up and realize it’s all been a dream.

Everyone he knows was in on it. They all knew. Nyota, Spock, Gaila, Scotty, even his mom and Chris. They all knew what was happening and none of them thought to stop it. None of them thought it a good idea to pull Jim aside and actually tell him the truth. None of them thought Jim might want to actually know what his life was like.

Jim was in the odd position of feeling infinitely old and young at the same time. He felt old because he feels tired and every move he makes is like a lead weight attached to his limbs. He wants to crawl into a hole and sleep forever. 

Meanwhile, he feels young due to the fact that everyone was treating him like a child. No one trusted him enough to actually tell him. Everyone coddled and and comforted him. They fed him sweet lies from a silver spoon and he ate it up. 

Now he looks like an idiot. He looks like the foolhardy seven year old who trusts explicitly and goes along with what everyone says without actually knowing anything.

Mostly, Jim Kirk wants to sleep for a long time.

The car stops and he doesn’t realize it at first. The driver turns around with an eyebrow raised and it pulls Jim out of his silent reverie. He bolts out of the car, pulling his bag out of the trunk before shoving several bills at the driver with a nod. 

He stares up at the building in front of him. It’s in a much richer part of Atlanta than the section in which he lived with Leo. It’s cleaner and the people that mill around on the street give him strange looks as they walk by in their designer shoes with leather briefcases. Jim looks down at his clothes and thanks the gods that at least he’s not in his ripped jeans and ratty converse. 

He does, however, have a massive and pretty beat up suitcase with him.

He looks around himself and realizes he doesn’t actually know who he’s looking for. Carol said she’d meet him outside the building.

The problem being that Jim has no idea what Carol Marcus looks like. At all. He knows that they used to be friends before the accident but she was a person that he met in those few years that he can’t pull back no matter how hard he tries. He forgot Carol Marcus and now he has to find her.

He looks around and sees several women that look to be about the right age to maybe be her. He knows what her voice sounds like, if only he could hear them talk.

Before he starts asking them if any of them are named Carol, he hears someone shout.

“James Tiberius Kirk you really don’t remember me.” He’s suddenly enveloped in expensive perfume and blonde hair in his face as thin arms wrap around his neck. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much, dear.” The woman he’s assuming is Carol Marcus says softly.

Unlike everyone else he’s spoken to in the last month and a half, she doesn’t sound like she’s going to cry. Jim finds he quite likes that.

“I’m guessing you’re Carol?” He laughs out when she finally pulls away. She nods and slaps him on the shoulder. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Well, it would seem that you aren’t really that different at all.” A flicker of something like disappointment passes over her face but then she’s back to a smile. “Come along, Jim. You’ve had a long day and I’d bet good money that you’re in desperate need of a soft bed.”

Jim shrugs. “I don’t know, could help. I could fall asleep on the pavement right now, to be quite honest.”

Carol takes Jim’s bag in her hand and starts leading him to the building. Jim starts to try to stop her and tell her he can handle carrying his own stuff but Carol waves him off with a perfectly manicured hand. “Oh don’t worry about it. Honestly, it’s my pleasure.”

A short walk and a silent elevator ride later, Jim is standing in Carol’s rather large apartment. It’s incredibly spacious with leather couches and a kitchen from his dreams. He looks around with wide eyes at it all. “I had no idea you were rich.” Comes out before he can stop it and he slaps a hand over his mouth.

Carol sighs and rolls her eyes, walking around him to the kitchen. She pulls out two glasses and a bottle of something that’s probably expensive. “Oh, it’s nothing big. My father is rather big in the world of publishing. Alexander Marcus. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

Oh, Jim’s heard of him. He’s in charge of Vengeance Publishing, a publishing house that has a history of destroying author’s careers if they don’t submit to the will of what Marcus thinks they should be writing. It’s Jim’s nightmare.

Chris Pike previously worked at Vengeance before leaving and starting Enterprise, the company that currently published Jim’s novels. “Oh yes, I know him.” He says with slight malice. He tries to hide it due to the fact that Carol is his daughter, but he can’t keep it all out.

She laughs out loud at his obvious hatred of her father. “Well at least that hasn’t changed. Don’t worry, a lot of people hate my father. It’s fine.” Her accent makes the words seem softer and sharper at the same time.

It reminds him of the way Leo’s thick southern accent curls around words and turns them into honey smooth bourbon, no matter the mood they’re said in. “I’m tired, Carol.” He blurts out, suddenly feeling the need to lie down and wish for a dream again.

She’s surprised at first but then her face turns solemn and she nods. “Come along then, your room is right down here.” She touches his shoulder lightly and starts down the hallway, not looking behind herself to see if he’s following.

She opens the door to a guest room with a large and, if he’s correct in his judgement, incredibly comfortable bed. It’s done up with white down sheets and large windows with white curtains are at the opposite end of the room. “Home sweet home.” Jim sighs.

Carol walks into the room ahead of him and turns around. “Well, at least for the next few days or so. I hope everything is alright? I didn’t have much notice.”

“And I am sorry about that. I was just so blind with anger and your phone number was on that card in the box of pictures...I just had to call because you were the one person who didn’t lie to me.” Jim looks back on himself, the one who was blind with rage and found a card reading ‘If you ever need a friend. xxCarol Marcus.’ He’d made the snap decision to call her, to call this stranger who he didn’t remember knowing but it felt like he could trust her. “I’m sorry for imposing myself on your life.”

Carol shakes her head and waves him off. “Oh, don’t be like that. It’s the least I can do, considering the fact that I didn’t tell you anything.”

Jim shakes his head vigorously. “No, you aren’t the same. If I’m guessing correctly, Bo-Leonard told you not to contact me. It’s not your fault.”

“I should have said something. I could have saved you from all of this.”

“It wasn’t your job to tell me anything, Carol. It was their job and they didn’t do it.”

Carol wraps him in yet another hug and this time she does cry. “Oh, Jim. Thank you.” This time, she does cry but it still feels more sincere than anything he’s heard in the past weeks. “You have no idea how much it means to me.”

Jim falls asleep that night feeling secure in the guest room of somewhere he feels he belongs.

-

He wakes up on the fourth day with a heavy heart. It’s not particularly different from the last few days, but this time it’s made all the more upsetting paired with the fact that he has to do the thing he’s been dreading for quite some time.

Today he has to see Leo.

He drags himself out of bed and dresses slowly in a sweater and nice jeans. He finishes it all off with some converse and a quick brush in his hair. He looks in the mirror and can’t help but notice the deep purple bags under his eyes.

He doesn’t want to give Leo any tips that he’s been thinking about him. He doesn’t want the other man to know that what he did to Jim completely tore him apart. In Carol’s words, “No one who would do that to someone deserves any sense of satisfaction.”

He’s not too sure if Leo really would get satisfaction from Jim’s suffering, but he would know that the other man feels weak and it would give him an in. A chance to try to weasel his way back into Jim’s life.

He makes his way into the kitchen, where Carol is sitting with an envelope and two cups of coffee. “Hello, dear. Are you ready?” For a minute, it sounds like she’s the one Jim married and they’re simply going out for brunch with friends or something.

Jim almost wishes it were true. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.” He looks down at himself. “Do I look okay? Should I dress nicer? God, I don’t know how to do this.”

Carol smiles a small affectionate smile at him and walks over to him. She picks some lint off his sweater and pats his shoulder. “You look fine dear. I don’t think anyone knows how to do this, really, but I think you’re going to do well.”

Jim wonders how there could be a way of “doing well” in this situation. He picks up the heavy envelope with slightly shaking hands. “Alright then. Let’s go.”

“Do you want your coffee?” Carol gestures over to the counter.

Jim laughs nervously. “No, I think I’m too jittery for that.”

Carol purses her lips. “It’s funny. Last time I saw you this nervous, it was your wedding day.” She seems to realize what she’s said because she immediately backtracks. “I’m so sorry, Jim. I didn’t think-well, I just didn’t think, did I?”

Jim stops her with a hand on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Carol. You didn’t mean any harm.”

-

“Are you quite sure you don’t want me to come in with you? I could come in with you.” Carol assures him with narrowed eyes. “Really, there’s no rule saying you need to face him all on your own, Jim.”

Jim can’t help but be grateful for this woman he met four days ago. Granted, it was for the second time, but it felt like the first to him. For once in his life, a fresh start didn’t end badly. 

He doesn’t need to know everything that they’ve been through together. He doesn’t need to know all the details about their apparently very short relationship four years ago. He doesn’t need to know anything about Carol Marcus because it doesn’t matter. He’s done with the past. He’s accepted that it’ll never come back. 

It’s time to move on in this world that he doesn’t quite fit into yet. “I’ll be fine, Carol. I will be sure to call you if I need help.”

He steps out of Carol’s insanely nice and expensive car and crosses the street quickly. He steps into the small coffeeshop and sees Leo sitting there in a sweater that is too big and obviously very old. His face is covered in stubble turned to scruff and he looks even more tired than Jim does. “Jim.” He says with a scratchy voice, as if he hasn’t spoken in four days.

Jim muses that maybe he hasn’t. “Leonard.” He sits down across from him. Jim doesn’t order anything. He doesn’t plan on this being drawn out. “I suppose I should just get right down to it.” He pushes the thick envelope at his soon-to-be-ex husband. “You need to sign these.”

“I don’t have a pen.” It’s a desperate grab at some glimmer of a chance.

“I mean that you need to read them and send them to my lawyer with your signature on them.” Jim sighs and settles into his seat a bit more. “I do hope you’ll find everything in there to be in order. You’re getting it all: the apartment, the car, everything in the apartment. Hell, you can have my ring. All I ask is that I get my half of the money so that I can at least support myself.” He finishes and tries to suppress his racing heart. He never thought he’d see a day where he’d be terrified of talking to Leo.

“You can have it all.” Leo says.

“I don’t want it.” Jim counters. “I have no use for it. I’m not staying here, you are. You need all that stuff and you do need money to get by. I’m leaving and I can manage for myself with what I’ll be getting.”

Leo nods solemnly and fiddles with the edges of the envelope. “Please just talk to me like a human, Jim.” He begs. 

Jim sighs and starts to push himself away from the table when Leo grabs his wrist. It’s like a punch to Jim’s stomach and he wrenches himself away from his grip. “Stop it. You fucked up, Leonard. You fucked up big and you don’t get me after that.” He hisses, not wanting to raise a huge fuss in the cafe.

“Please, Jim.” Bones pleads as Jim stands up and walks out. Leo stands. “Please don’t do this.”

He sounds like a thirsty man in a desert and Jim doesn’t have the water he wants. “Just sign the papers, Leonard.”

Leo looks like he wants to shout but he instead drops back down into his seat with a resigned sigh and a nod. “Goodbye, Jim.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really love Carol Marcus, okay?


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate Carol, she means well.

Carol meets Jim for the first time in a secondhand bookstore when he’s still in love with Leo. He browses the shelves with his tongue poking out between his teeth while said best friend trailed behind him, arms laden with a pile of novels. The brunet scowled and sighed everytime Jim would make a small exclamation and read the back of a novel. “Come on, Jim. I do have to go to work eventually.”

Carol stares at the two of them for a few minutes before pulling her gaze away because she’s many things but she’s not a stalker. She knows who Jim is, of course. Her father is so involved in the literary world that she can’t help but pick some things up and the attractive young author had peaked her curiosity from the moment she first saw him on the cover of a magazine. Jim is taking the world by storm with his reckless and passionate writing style and he’s one of the most famous people in circles that care. Carol happens to be in those circles.

It’s a cliche wrapped in a cheesy romance novel plot accented with blushing.

Of course she can’t just stay away and mind her own business. “Excuse me?” She raises her voice slightly, just enough to catch the author’s attention. 

“Yes?” Jim responds with a blindingly bright and charming smile in her direction. “Can I help you?”

Behind him, Leo rolls his eyes and stalks off, arms still full of Jim’s books. Carol watches him for a split second before turning back to meet Jim’s blue eyed gaze.

“Well,” She starts with a slight blush, “I just moved here and I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of a good place to get dinner?”

Jim quirks his lips up in an expression that says he knows exactly what Carol is doing. She doesn’t really have a problem with it. If she had wanted to be subtle, she could have been. “Well, first off, we need to get one thing straight.”

“And what would that be?”

“Good food is worthless without good books. Most things are worthless without good books, honestly. What are you in the mood for?” He says all this completely seriously and Carol has to suppress a giggle.

“Italian sounds good.”

Jim purses his lips for a moment. “So you’re going for a classic. Good.” She winks at her. “I appreciate the beauty of a classic.”

“Yeah, can’t go wrong.” Carol breathes out and Jim grabs her hand, pulling her through the maze of bookshelves in the cramped shop. They nearly run into Leo, who’s scowling next to the very shelf they were looking for. 

“Bones!” The look that Jim gives him is full of adoration and it makes Carol’s stomach take up residence in her feet because it’s so obvious that the author loves him. “Hey, I was just about to come looking for you! This is-” Jim gestures towards Carol but stops when he realizes he doesn’t actually know her name. 

“Carol. Carol Marcus.” She fills in for Jim with a small smile. “It’s so nice to meet you.” Carol reaches out to shake Leo’s hand. He reciprocates stiffly and Carol can tell that he feels threatened. 

“McCoy. Leonard McCoy.”

Jim bounces on his toes awkwardly, obviously sensing the tension between the two of them. “Alright. Well, Bones. I was just about to take Carol here to that little italian place down the road. Wanna come?”

Leo rolls his eyes and puts his hands on his hips. “I have work, Jim. I have to go. It was really nice meeting you, Carol.” With nothing more than a nod and a mock salute, Leo walks out of the bookstore.

Carol wonders if her night would have ended without Jim in her bed and a copy of A Farewell To Arms next to leftover italian food had Leo not walked out of the bookstore that day.

-

It takes all of two weeks for Carol to fall in love with Jim. It takes him a month more to start feeling nearly the same. It really does hurt her to be with someone who is so in love with another person. “Jim, my father wants to meet you. Dinner tonight.”

Jim groans and leans over her marble countertop dramatically. “He’s met me already. We didn’t get along.”

“He wants to meet you in a nonproffesional capacity. Please, Jim.” Carol rolls her eyes at the blond’s antics and smacks him with a newspaper playfully. Her father had called her that morning asking ‘why he didn’t hear that she was dating Jim Kirk and why they hadn’t met for dinner yet’ and while Carol knew that Jim hated him, she still held some hope that maybe this would make Jim see that she was there for him and wanted something serious.

“I have plans. With Bones.”

Oh.

“Oh, alright then.” Carol collects her newspaper and the rest of the mail and gets out of her stool, ready to go back to her room and get ready for the day.

“Carol!” Jim pops up off the counter and chases after her but Carol is too quick in getting to her room and closing the door. She leans against the door while Jim knocks and shouts. “Carol, come on! I’ll meet your dad for dinner, okay? Carol it’s nothing like that, I promise.”

She takes a moment to catch her breath and make her pulse slow down. She knows there’s nothing going on between Leo and Jim, but it still makes her absolutely terrified when he’s brought up. “I don’t know if I can do this, Jim.” She speaks definitively.

Jim sighs and she can hear him slump against the door on the other side. “Carol. Please.”

She could forgive him. She could unlock the door, take him to dinner with her dad, and live happily ever after with the man she’d grown to love so much. She could have what she wanted. “Jim, I care about you and I don’t think you’re happy.” It’s a moment to choose between what she wants and what Jim needs and for once in her life, Carol doesn’t make the selfish decision. 

She turns back towards the door and opens it up to Jim standing there with his mouth hanging wide open. Carol smiles fondly and cups his jaw in her hand. “You love Leonard. You may love me too,” Jim opens his mouth to protest, but Carol cuts him off. “I don’t really need to know, Jim. My point is that you’ll always be his. We could get married and you would still be his.”

She runs her thumb along the slight stubble that peppers his jawline. He closes his eyes and presses into the touch, his face looking like he’s trying not to cry. “I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this.” He whispers thickly, voice betraying everything. “I am so sorry, Carol.”

“Don’t be.” Carol leans in and pecks his lips lightly, a soft reminder of everything that she felt for him. “I may not have you like I had hoped, but I still have you as a friend, right?”

“Of course.”

Carol takes her hand away and smooths out her shirt awkwardly. “Good. Now go tell your doctor you love him before I change my mind.”

“What if he-”

“He loves you, Jim.” Carol cuts him off. “He loves you so much. Anyone with eyes can tell.”

-  
“Leonard, you need to tell him.” Carol urges, standing in the doorway of his apartment. She pleads with the man who holds Jim between his fingertips. “You cannot do this to him. I simply won’t go along with it.”

Leo raises an eyebrow at her and crosses his arms. “Then don’t.”

This takes Carol by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t come. Don’t visit him. Don’t contact him. He doesn’t remember you anyway, it won’t hurt him any.” Leo’s voice has a slightly cruel edge to it that Carol’s never heard before. “Just walk out of his life like you should have three years ago.”

There it is. Leo had always been upset about Carol’s presence in Jim’s life. From the day they met at the bookstore, to his and Jim’s wedding where she’d been a bridesmaid, to their constant talking, Leo had not tried to hide his bitterness towards her even a little bit.

He didn’t feel this way about Gaila or Nyota, both of whom Jim had either tried to or had small relationships with. Apparently Carol was the only one significant enough to really deserve any kind of negative reaction.

“Can I use your restroom?” Carol blurts out suddenly, idea forming in her mind. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got a meeting after this and I won’t have time.”

Leo gives her an utterly confused look, but he acquiesces. “Sure. Right down the hall, first door on your right. You know where it is.” He gestures in the direction of said restroom and she scurries past him. “Don’t take too long, I’ve got to go to work soon.” He calls after her.

She walks down the hall but rather than taking the first door on the right, she takes the second. The guest room that she’s almost sure Jim stays in and keeps all of his belongings in. She feels bad, really, doing this, but she can’t stop herself. Jim needs to know.

Carol knows that it’s probably coming from the part of her that still loves him, but she convinces herself that it’s the part of her that is good friends with Jim. A quick scan of the closet and she finds it.

It’s a large shoebox and heavier than expected when she pulls it down. She opens it up and her suspicions are confirmed. Wedding pictures and invitations and place settings.

She pulls her business card out of her pocket and scrawls a quick message on it before placing it in the box and shoving it on the bed.

After that, she waits for a call.

-

The second time Jim meets Carol, she can’t get her heart beat to slow down and she runs forward to hug him. She feels his arms wrap around her and it feels familiar but wrong once again.

They’d remained friends through all of it but Leo never came up and it made things hard between the two of them. Jim wanted to talk about him but Carol didn’t really want to hear at first. It got easier, the more she got over Jim, but by that point it was just agreed that they didn’t talk about relationships with each other.

Carol didn’t tell him about dating Graham, Steven, Richard, or any of the other men that she dated. She didn’t tell him about her pregnancy scare or the time she was proposed to.

It was a thing. They didn’t talk about love and it didn’t break Carol’s heart. They drifted off in the past year, as people usually do.

Now, though, now she has Jim back. She holds onto him and catches herself relaxing into it and acting like the past four years never happened. She has to pull herself back and compose herself.

Having Jim back in her life, back in her home, back with her, makes her breath catch and nearly makes her cry and laugh and hope again. Then she remembers.

She remembers that Jim was married.

She remembers that Jim doesn’t remember her.

She remembers that Jim was hurt.

It’s all too real for her and she has to pull away sometimes but she knows that Jim needs her.

So she plays the role of perfect hostess and maybe sometimes she falls into their old routines but she tries to catch herself. When Jim delivers the divorce papers, she can’t help but breathe out a sigh of relief that he didn’t stay and talk. When they come back signed and Jim cries because it’s over, it’s really over, she cannot help but hold him because he needs her.

When Jim has the other’s over to talk about it all because he wants to be somewhere comfortable, Carol sits in the kitchen, pretending to eat lunch and listening to them the whole time.

“I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me. You most of all, Ny.” Jim says, voice half anger and half confusion and hurt. 

“Jim.” Nyota starts calmly. “I really do care about you. I don’t want you to think that just because I didn’t tell you this that I don’t.”

“I don’t know what to think, honestly.” Jim sighs out and buries his face in his hands.

“Please, lad. Listen to us. We thought it was for the best. Leonard talked to all of us and we went along with it because it seemed like the only way to keep the two of you together.” Scotty supplies.

At that, Jim whips his head up, eyes fiery and angry. “And why should we have stayed together? From everything I’ve heard, I wasn’t happy. He ignored me, he drank himself into a stupor every night, we didn’t even sleep in the same bed.” Jim rattles off everything that he’d been told by Winona and Chris, whom he had told the fulness of what had happened before the accident. “Why should we have stayed together if I was unhappy? Because Bones wanted it?” Jim spits out the nickname like a curse. He’s in full on rage mode now and nobody knows how to stop it. 

“If you had all told me from the beginning, we might have been able to work it out, but right now I can see no universe in which I forgive any of you for this, least of all him. There is no way.”

He’s standing at this point, towering over all of the seated guests. Gaila cowers slightly, leaning into Scotty. “Please, Jim. Just give it some time. You won’t feel this way later.” She practically whispers.

“She’s right. You’re hotheaded now but when you’ve cooled down we can talk about this.” Scotty responds.

“Get out.” Jim hisses. 

“Jim, this is most irrational of you. You are alienating some of your best friends.” Spock, obviously trying to sedate Jim, supplies.

“Get out of this fucking apartment right now.” Jim says with pure anger as he points toward the door. “Don’t call me, don’t try to come see me. Don’t do anything unless I say something first, got it?”

They four of them nod and walk towards the door with their tails between their legs as Jim remains in the living room, breathing heavily. Carol watches them as they cast her furtive and angry glances. They obviously all think she convinced Jim to be so angry. They never did like her.

She may care about Jim and want Jim like they all know she wants him, but she has made sure not too influence him beyond what should be done. She hasn’t pushed for a relationship, hasn’t talked to him about his whole situation beyond trying to comfort him and talk him off the edge. She loves him but she knows she can’t do that to him.

Carol knows it can’t end well. It won’t end well.

The last night that Jim’s there, the night before his flight to Iowa, he changes everything. “Thank you so much, Carol. You’ve been really great.” His smile is genuine in a way that Carol hasn’t seen for the entire week and a half that Jim’s stayed in her guest room.

A table full of italian food (hey, so she’s nostalgic, what of it?) lays between them. Carol smiles with closed lips around a mouthful of mostaccioli. She swallows and shrugs. “It’s the least I can do, as a friend.” 

“Really, Carol. I don’t think anyone has ever been quite so nice to me.” Jim leans in and brushes his lips against hers chastely. “Thank you.” He whispers against her lips.

It’s another moment to choose. To choose between herself and Jim. To choose to take what she wants or do the right thing. It would be so easy this time, to wrap her arms around his neck and let him say that he loves her when he doesn’t. It would be so easy to have Jim again, to forget the circumstances.

Once again, however, she chooses Jim over what she wants. She pulls back and averts her gaze away from Jim’s hurt eyes. “No, Jim.”

“Why not?” Jim sounds close to tears. “We were together before and you said we were happy. Why not try again? I’m not in love with Leo this time, you can have me.”

Carol lets out a shaky breath and runs a hand through her hair, feeling the strands run through her fingers. “You don’t love me, Jim. You’re hurt, you’re lost, and you want security but you don’t love me. At least, not like you think you do.”

Jim nods slowly. He holds her gaze and smiles slightly. “I think you’re probably right. Thank you.” He leans forward and pecks her again but this time it’s not a precursor to anything, just a friendly kiss. 

It breaks Carol’s heart. “No problem, Jim. What are friends for?”

Jim leaves the next day on an airplane and Carol expects to feel like something’s missing, but mostly she feels freed. She breathes out a sigh of relief and it feels like something heavy has been taken away from her very bones, like she can move on from Jim Kirk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, don't hate her. She fell in love.
> 
> But she made the right choice in the end, so??


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took so long! Writer's block is HELL

Leo can’t seem to escape his own mind in the days that follow Jim leaving for good. He only leaves his apartment to get the mail and when he has to talk to Jim in that goddamn coffee shop and sign those goddamn divorce papers. He regrets that day but it was ultimately unavoidable.

He stays in his house and refuses to leave the safety of his own four walls, so carefully built around himself. He sleeps all day and calls in sick to work. Eventually he stops calling in. They know he won’t be in for a while. 

Besides, not like they want a surgeon who is “at extreme risk of a mental breakdown.”

He thinks about drinking sometimes. He stares at the empty cabinets and wonders how long he can go without leaving the house to buy food and probably booze. He feels it burning under his skin- an itch that makes him feel like he needs to run and cry and mostly drink until he can’t remember his name.

He’ll still remember Jim’s name, but he knows that he’ll never forget that. Ever. As hard as Leo might try, he’ll never forget the name of the man that he loved and used. The man that left him because he wanted to feel better.

Leo broke him. He can hardly stand to even be in the apartment anymore. Everywhere he looks is a reminder of what he did. A reminder of what he had and what he lost.

The truth is, he knows he could have fixed it all. It would have been too easy to simply tell the truth but Leo couldn’t bring himself to do it. The apartment is a reminder of it. 

What had previously been a home now feels like a jail he can never bring himself to leave.

It takes a week and a half for him to completely run out of everything he could possibly eat in the house. He walks to the fridge in the morning and finds it empty. A quick scan of the pantry finds that empty, too. He stares at the empty space as if he could will food into existence with sheer willpower.

It’s not that he’s lazy or tired or anything. He could go outside and easily get to the grocery store to pick up some food. He could easily do that.

What he can’t do easily is avoid the liquor in the store. He knows that going in there will only lead to him staring at those bottles, feeling the cool glass beneath his fingertips, promising burning liquid in his throat, burning away all the memories of what he did to Jim. 

He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t know if he can resist it.

Leo knows where that road leads. He knows where it got him and he can’t afford to go back there. He can’t dig the hole deeper than it already is.

He stares at the pantry for a long time before finally resigning himself to it. He has to leave the house. He has to get out of there and pretend like he doesn’t want to break down at the slightest touch or sound.

After he’s dressed in jeans and a hoodie and is on his way out the door, he ends up sending a text to Nyota. “Going to the store. Ran out of food.” In the hopes that she’ll get it and come drag him away from the thing that could easily destroy him. He braces himself with a deep breath before rolling his shoulders and opening the door.

It’s a short walk to the small grocery store just down the street from his building. He enters the supermarket full of waxy fruit and overly-bright shiny packages of things he’s not sure actually count as food.

It’s easy for him to grab a basket and gather packages of food that should last him at least a week. It’s easy for him to go through the motions of collecting his favorite foods and to pretend that he doesn’t want to crawl to the back of the store and put every bottle of anything in his basket.

He does, of course, end up in the very place he doesn’t want to be. Leo stares at the shelves stocked with what some call “liquid courage” but that’s not what he’s looking for. This is fear that he’s feeling. Leo is more in the mood for a liquid escape. A chemical reaction that will take him somewhere that isn’t his own mind, if only for a few hours.

Of course, now that Jim’s gone and he wouldn’t have to hide from anyone anymore, it wouldn’t have to be just a few hours. It could be days, weeks even. As long as he wanted to forget, until he drank himself to death.

Leo found his fingers twitching towards to bottle.

He wouldn’t even have to worry about money or anything, Leo reasons. Jim left him with half of the money they had together. With Jim being an award winning author with a movie deal and Leo being a neurologist, he’d be set.

Enough money to die on, at the rate at which he’d probably be going. Enough money to leave some behind for friends. 

He doesn’t realize how long he’d been standing in front of the endless bottles until he feels a soft hand on his shoulder. He practically jumps out of his skin and he whirls around to find Nyota staring sadly at him. “I got your text.” She pulls gently on his elbow and he goes with her, walking through the aisles of the store, away from the magnets that pull him in to a darker and darker abyss that seems so tempting these days. “Come on, Leo. You’re coming home with me.”

Nyota takes the basket and hands it to an attendant with a small apology. Leo makes an indignant sound in the back of his throat but can’t bring himself to really argue with the woman. “Why can’t I go back to my own home?” He asks sullenly.

Nyota sighs and tightens her grip on his elbow as they walk out into the sunlight. “I went to your place before I came here, Leonard. I don’t know how, but in the past week and a half, that place has become a wreck. I don’t know how you let that happen, Leo. There’s clothes on the ground, old dishes piled up in the sinks, it’s disgusting.” Nyota’s brow furrows and she shakes her head. “No, you’re not going back there. I should have come to get you sooner, honestly.”

“I’m fine, Ny. I can handle myself.” Leo mumbles and he feels like a petulant child refusing to do his chores. “Just let me go home.”

Nyota ignores him and keeps walking. She walks him to her car and practically shoves him in the passenger side. He’s grateful for the car. It’s not a long ride to her place, but Leo knows he’d start crying at some point and he’s not too fond of people staring at him when he’s just trying to walk down the sidewalk and have a bit of a cry. “Thank you.” He sighs out. He closes his eyes. “I don’t think I could be alone anymore.”

Nyota reaches over and pats his knee. “I know, Leonard. I know.”

-

“So that’s it.” Leo sighs and hands over the papers to the super of the building. “This is goodbye, I guess.”

“I’ll be sorry to see you go, Leonard. Do come back and visit sometime.” The older woman smiled at him. “You turned in your keys and everything?”

“Yes, Mrs. LeBaron.” He smiles weakly and turns on his heel. “I’ll see you around.” Leo strides quickly out of the familiar building to Uhura’s sleek black car. He casts one last look up at what used to be his home.

His home with Jim. Gone. He’d made the decision to move out and sell it when he’d spoken to Nyota about how he simply couldn’t live there anymore. He’d been falling apart in the small but comfortable living space that seemed enormous and awkward without a second body occupying it. He could not live with the scents, sights, and sounds of Jim hanging around. “Are you okay?” Nyota asked him quietly. “That was your home.”

“It was all I had left of him.” Leo whispers weakly. “It was the last thing we really shared with each other.”

“You’re going to be okay, Leonard.” Nyota drives down the street, a few cardboard boxes in the backseat. The last of Leo’s possessions she would store for him while he was at his appointment. “Are you going to yell at Dr. Moore again or are you actually going to play nice this time?” She teases in reference to his last counseling session with the extremely qualified psychologist.

Leo grumbles slightly. “I’ll be good.”

“Good.”

-

 “Why don’t you tell me about the month leading up to when you started drinking again.” Doctor Lara Moore sits with her pen poised perfectly above her notebook in her pristine office. Her blonde hair is styled perfectly into a stylish bun at the nape of her neck.

It’s all so perfect, so put together. Leo wants to tear it all apart and make the world around him look like he feels. “We hadn’t spoken in a while. I suppose we just grew apart.”

“What was it really like?” Her voice is sharp but not threatening.

Leo sighs and runs his hands over his face, refusing to make eye contact with the doctor. “Jim’s always been flighty. He’s always been the type to run from place to place, never really settling down for long enough to have a story there, to know and love people but he stayed my for so long that I thought it would work.

“I thought that we could settle down and be together. For two and a half years, it was perfect. It was Jim and Leo against the world. We worked and I was sure that it was the end for me. Jim was it.” Leo sighs out the last sentence. “Jim is it for me. I suppose I never was that for him.”

Dr Moore sits forward slightly in her chair. “How do you mean?”

“Jim started getting crazy. He started getting restless and looking for ways out, in case he needed them. He’s always had abandonment problems and he’d rather leave than be left, so I knew he was looking for reasons to leave me before I could do that to him, as if I ever would.” Leo laughs humorlessly. “He didn’t say it outright but it was so obvious. He wanted a reason to leave. 

“He started picking fights over little things. He would yell sometimes and other times he’d just-he’d draw up into himself and not talk to me. By that last month before I started again, we hardly spoke. 

“He was looking for a reason to leave, so I gave him one, I guess. By the time I realized that I didn’t want that, it was too late.” Leo finishes with a sigh. His face is buried in his hands, elbows on his knees. He tries to swallow the tears welling up in his eyes and causing a lump to form in his throat about the size of a softball. “It was too late for me. For us. The one chance I got to fix it was the perfect chance for him to leave.”

“Do you miss him?” The woman’s pen scratched along her pad, probably making notes about how utterly fucked up Leo was. 

“Of course. I’d do anything to get him back. I’d take it all back. Everything.” Leo feels the tears slide down his face, hot and wet, leaving tracks down his neck. “I would do anything to have him back in my life, in any capacity.”

She sits back in her chair with a thoughtful look. “Before you can work on him, you need to work on yourself. Have you tried writing him a letter?”

“No. He doesn’t want any contact.” Leo says resolutely. 

“I meant to write him a letter and not send it.” She smiles. “It can be extremely cathartic and I believe it could be beneficial to your mental state.”

Leo nods slowly, not totally convinced.

-

He writes the letter one afternoon when he’s alone in Nyota and Spock’s apartment with crap daytime tv and a locked liquor cabinet. He writes and writes and writes until it’s entirely too long and too sappy but it says what he would say to the love of his life if he could and it feels better.

He stares at it with a slight smile before setting it on the coffee table and heading to the bathroom to take a shower.

Disaster strikes not long after. He exits the shower and pulls himself into some clean sweats and a tee shirt. He’s running a towel through his hair when he looks at the coffee table and finds the letter missing. He whirls around for a few minutes and finds the entire place apparently empty.

He thinks that perhaps he merely misplaced the sheets of paper containing his very heart and soul on them. He searches under couches, between cushions, in the in bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, everywhere and anywhere it could possibly be.

Spock walks through the door when Leo is halfway beneath the couch, yelling at himself. “Leonard? Is there something in particular you are looking for?”

Leo groans and extracts himself from the couch. “I wrote a letter and now I can’t find it.”

Spock raises an eyebrow. “As I was just taking out the mail that needed to be sent, I took the liberty of taking out all the mail.”

Leo’s stomach drops to his feet. “You didn’t-”

“I read your letter briefly and I assumed that you meant to send it. I do believe Jim would benefit from hearing your apologies and those personal things which you had written for him. I assumed that you meant to give it to the person to whom you had addressed it.” Spock folds his hands together.

“You bastard.” Leo races over to the window to see the mail truck picking up the letters in the blue box to be sent. Too late to get anything back now. “I cannot believe that you-”

“Was that not your intention, Leonard?” Spock asks genuinely.

“No, that wasn’t my goddamn intention, you bastard! That was an exercise for my counselor. That letter was never meant to be sent because Jim has made it quite clear that he never wants to see me again.” Leo’s chest rises and falls rapidly as he yells and crowds the much calmer man. “Jim doesn’t want a letter from me! Jim does not want to hear me talk about how much I love him after everything I’ve done and now I can’t stop it!” 

“My deepest apologies, Leonard. I never thought that-”

Leo doesn’t quite register it himself when his own hand flies out and punches Spock square on the nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy?


	17. Chapter 17

The first step is leaving. It’s walking away from Leo with his held high as he can possible hold it with the weight that seems to be held in every single one of his bones. It’s not very high, but it’s something. The first step out the door is the hardest one to take.

The second step is facing them. Jim steps off the plane in Iowa, dreading the moment when he’ll have to see Winona and Chris. He knows it’s unavoidable. He needs to live somewhere and he isn’t in a state to be alone with his thoughts. He dreads facing his parents and knowing that they knew. They knew and never told him.

He’s ready for it. He’s ready to not really be able to face them or talk to them. Jim expects it to be incredibly hard. Everything else is.

“Jim.” Winona says and steps close to him. Jim thinks for a moment that she’s going to hug him, but instead they end up staring at each other, the moment practically buzzing with unsaid words and revealed secrets. “Jim.”

Despite everything that he thought would happen, everything he thought he would feel, all Jim can think to say is, “That is my name, Mom.” before wrapping her in his arms.

The shorter woman starts crying at this, sounding slightly hysterical. She buries her face in his chest and clings to him. “I’m so sorry, James. You should hate me.”

Jim doesn’t really have words for it. All he knows is that seeing them standing there, knowing that they didn’t want this for him, seeing his mother looking like she spent the whole night crying, he realized he couldn’t hate them. Even after everything that’s happened to him, after everything that she missed in his childhood, he can’t hate her. “It wasn’t your fault.”

It’s true.

“We talked to Nyota and the others.” Chris starts and Jim freezes up. Of course. “Jim, they miss you.”

Jim pulls himself away from Winona and fixes his stepfather with a steely gaze. “Did they tell you about the last time we talked? Did they call me crazy? Did they tell you that I yelled at them and kicked them out?” He tries to keep himself from shouting in the middle of the airport but he can feel his blood boiling. “It’s true, of course. Jim Kirk, overreacting again!”

“They just want to talk to you. They messed up, Jim. They know that.” Chris doesn’t even flinch or blink under Jim’s furious glare. “You need to talk to them. You and I both know that you like to run and you can’t do that anymore.”

Jim doesn’t respond to him, just picks up his bags and walks towards the exit, letting them trail behind him.

The third step is forgetting. It’s acting like nothing happened to him, like he didn’t have his life torn apart just three weeks ago. He goes around town, greeted constantly by people who didn’t care about him when he was actually living there. The people of Riverside, Iowa hated Jim Kirk until he actually did something with his life after he moved away.

At this point, Jim is sick of people who never cared. He’s tired and scared and all he can think about most nights is a bottle of whiskey and the fact that he could call Leo so easily.

Jim Kirk’s life is falling apart. He goes to the counselor that everyone insists upon once a week and he doesn’t really speak. Doctor Thomas asks questions and pokes and prods at Jim’s ‘fragile mental state’ for hours and hours but Jim doesn’t see the point of having a stranger try to fix him. He’s fairly certain he can handle his own life.

He’s just come home from one of these sessions when he finally lets it all break. It’s not something planned, not something he even felt coming. Honestly, Jim doesn’t expect it at all. It had been a completely normal day in which he only thought about Leo twice.

What happens to ruin it all comes in the form of Winona sitting at the dining room table with a pile of mail in front of her. She whistles as she goes through it all, rolling her eyes at the letters from Jim’s fans that have somehow managed to make it all the way here.

Jim watches her with a content smile on his face and he notices it when she suddenly freezes. 

His first thought is that maybe it’s Frank. Her ex-husband never did stop trying to contact her, even after fifteen years. It wouldn’t be a surprise to get a letter from him but it always shakes Winona in a way that Jim has yet to figure out how to fix.

He walks over to her and takes the letter away, fully intending to throw it away and not speak about it. She doesn’t need to read anything from the asshole that nearly tore their family apart completely.

He checks the envelope, just to be sure that it’s not Sam. His older brother hasn’t spoken to them in years and Winona was always waiting for her son to come back and even though Jim was adamant about the fact that he couldn’t possibly care less about what he did, he couldn’t take it away from Winona if Sam was finally getting his head out of his ass.

Suddenly, Jim can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t hear anything but a rushing in his ears that feels like anger and hurt. He practically throws the heavy envelope away from himself and he jumps away from it as if it could bite him.

‘Leonard Horatio McCoy’ is written is handwriting that is decidedly not Leo’s. It’s probably Spock’s, judging by the neatness and severity of it. Jim stares at the envelope and suddenly he realizes he’s clutching his chest.

Winona picks up the envelope in careful fingers. She starts off towards the kitchen with it and Jim stops her. “No. Just put it on the table. I’ll deal with it.”

“Are you sure?” Winona’s blue eyes meet Jim’s own and she looks about ready to set the letter on fire right then and there.

“I can do this. I’m fine.” He doesn’t look at her so much as he stares at what’s in her hand. She sets it down on the table again and pats his shoulder awkwardly as she leaves the room, obviously trying to offer him some sort of comfort.

The next hour is spent resolutely not staring at the letter. He paces around the dining room and plays with his phone, scrolling through contacts and trying to find someone to call who could fix this.

The truth is, and he knows this, is that there is not a single person on this planet who could take away everything that he felt for so long. There’s not a single person who could make it all disappear. He loved Leo more than he ever loved anything. He would have given it all up for him. The writing, the success, the money, he would have given up anything and all the older man would have had to do was ask.

He vowed to forget all of that and yet he can’t. Just when he’s convinced himself that he’s made progress, that he can get away from Leo, he’s pulled right back in by a few pieces of paper.

He doesn’t even know what’s in the letter. It wasn’t sent by Leo, despite what the return address says. Spock sent it. 

Spock, his old best friend. The most level headed and logical person he knows sent him a letter and he had to have a reason.

He should read it. 

How bad could it possibly be?

“You can do this. You are Jim Kirk and you can do this.” He speaks to himself in the empty room, feeling more than a little bit crazy.

Instead he taps a number on his phone impulsively and holds it to his ear with a death grip on the device. He listens to it ring once, twice, three times before he gathers up the nerve to hang up and-

“Jim?” Nyota Uhura’s voice sounds breathy and panicked. “Jim are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Ny.” He speaks in a tone of voice that even he doesn’t believe.

“No you aren’t.”

“No, I’m not.” He sighs out. “I got a letter from Leonard.”

“I know. I think you should read it.”

“Have you read it?” The pause that answers Jim’s question is enough to answer it. “Okay. I’ll try.” He hangs up just as it seems like she’s about to respond.

For some reason, talking to her doesn’t hurt as much as it did the last time. It takes him completely off guard and suddenly he’s crying, burying his face in his hands and willing Winona and Chris to just stay away for once. He feels his entire facade of perfect stability crumble around him and suddenly he’s a thirteen year old boy again, sitting in the corner of his room with tears streaming down his face as Sam packs his bags and walks out, paying no attention to the little brother covered in bruises and scrapes that were put there by a stepfather who doesn’t love anyone but himself.

Suddenly he’s a twenty year old with no goals and no aim in life, riding a motorcycle across Iowa, too afraid to ever leave the state he’s always called home, with no one to go home to, no one to care until an older man stops him in a bar after a fight and dares him to be better.

Suddenly he’s lost and alone and afraid in a new state at a college he’d never even heard of before but that he knows it took a lot to even get him in.

Jim feels lost and confused and he’s not sure what to do. He’d promised himself never to let himself be vulnerable again but Leo always had a way of taking apart everything that Jim was and putting it together in patterns unrecognizable.

He cries and he screams and he feels sick to his stomach when he thinks about leaving the man who fixed him, who was his stability for the longest time, even before they were anything but friends. He feels guilty and terrible for breaking the one who fixed him to begin with. The one who made him strong enough to leave.

It’s ironic and it makes Jim hate himself that he couldn’t stay with the one person who he’d promised forever.

He owed Leo forever.

Without even thinking about it, Jim picks up the envelope and opens it. He sits on the floor to read it, legs crossed like a child.

-  
Dear Jim,

I’m not really how to do this. I don’t plan on sending this but I still need you to hear it correctly. 

Still, I don’t know how to word this so that you don’t hate me. I don’t know how to make you happy anymore.

It’s been three weeks. Three weeks since you found out. three weeks since I tried to fix something irreparable. Three weeks since you left. I think you needed to leave.

I’m not normally one for declarations of love or any of that shit. That’s your thing, Jim. You’ve always been the one who’s good at words. 

I used to not be one for lying, either. Well, here we are. You drove me crazy, Jim. I was so desperate for a piece of you. I was so desperate to make you love me.

That’s probably it, isn’t it? “Make you love me.” 

I panicked, Jim. I panicked and I lied. I know it’s no excuse. I’m not here for excuses. I just want to say this and I don’t think I’ll ever get another chance. I need you to know that I never thought anything like this would ever happen to us and I never wanted it to. I wanted us to work. I needed us to work.

You were right, Jim. My husband was it for me. That was my big mistake: I wanted you to be my Jim but you’re not anymore. You aren’t him. I lost that Jim long before any car crash or injury.

I can’t blame you, I won’t blame you. You played a part but I promised to take care of you and I didn’t. I was always supposed to be your rock but I let it get away from me and I ended up being a weight that drowned us both.

I never stopped loving you and I don’t think I ever will. You made a mark on me, Jim. You changed my life in ways that I never thought anyone else ever could. When we met, I was drunk and lost and I missed my father. I had a residency to complete that I was planning on quitting and throwing away but you were right there, helping a crazy stranger. Saving a man you had nothing to do with.

You say that I fixed you but I don’t think you were ever broken. You’ve always been you, Jim, and that’s kind of perfect to me. You never needed me. Somehow you convinced yourself that you did but it’s not true.

Things will work out for you, Jim. They have to because if they don’t, if i broke you so badly that you’ll never be happy again, I won’t be able to forgive myself. Not ever. 

I need you to be happy, Jim. I forgot that for a while but I still need it.

At this point, I can’t even bear to think about myself.

I hope you’re happy in the end, Jim. You deserve better than what I gave you.

-Bones

-

When he finishes, Jim doesn’t scream. He doesn’t sob or even cry, really. He stares at the papers in front of himself for a few seconds before folding them back up and putting them in the envelope.

He doesn’t really know what to feel. Leo was honest. He was really, truly honest with Jim and he’s not quite sure how to process that. Clearly Leo is ready to let go of Jim, to let him finally be himself.

Jim isn’t quite sure what that means. The only times he ever remembers being comfortable with his place in life were the moments that he’s gotten back, the small things that he can recall with tremendous effort.

The glimpses of three years of marriage that suddenly overtake him in grocery stores and movie theaters.

He’s getting those years back finally and now he has to come to terms with the fact that it’s time to let them go.

Jim’s not quite sure what it means, “being himself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter....


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long! School has been positively exhausting!

“Spock! Oh my god!” Nyota opens the door and as soon as her eyes land on Spock’s bleeding nose, she’s across the room and trying to make sure it isn’t broken. “What happened?” She shoots a pointed glare at Leo and he nearly withers under the intensity of it.

“This bast-” Leo stops his train of thought when he sees her eyes narrow even further. “Spock sent the letter!” He waves his hands hysterically. He can feel the bile rising in his throat and worries briefly that he might actually throw up on Spock, who is now pinching his nose in the most dignified way that one can pinch one’s nose. 

That is to say, not all that dignified, but still better than Leo could have ever done. 

Spock turns to give him a raised eyebrow and Leo still withers underneath the hyper intelligent gaze despite the fact that he probably just broke the man’s god damn nose. He should feel more empowered than this, really. “I do not believe that it justifies this violent response, Leonard.” 

“Why did you think it was okay to send?” He can feel his throat getting tight and he knows he’s about to cry but he wills it down long enough to keep yelling. “Why would you read that and automatically think to just send it away to the man who you damn well know doesn’t want to hear from any of us?” Leo shakes his head and starts walking back towards the guest room. “Especially me.”

Nyota catches him before he can leave with a surprisingly strong grip on his arms. (Not really that surprising, he’s been to the gym with her before.) She turns him so that they’re face to face, held away from her. Her eyes blaze with a fury that makes him wish he wasn’t there. “You asshole.” She spits in his face.

Not even towards Jim has she ever directed this much anger and it terrifies Leo. 

“You fucking asshole. We stood by you.” She continues, “We chose you, Leonard McCoy. We could have chosen to just tell Jim but we trusted you.” She laughs bitterly and rolls her eyes. “It was the biggest mistake I have ever made, but I chose you and I can’t change that. Don’t treat us like this after all we did for you. After everything we gave up because we had faith that you wouldn’t fuck us all over.”

Leo trembles slightly and tries to shrug her hands off his arms to no avail. She continues to grip him, almost seeming as if she needs an anchor to say this, shaking ever so slightly as she is. Before he knows it, both of them are crying, tears streaming down their faces without any of the gasping sobs that there probably should be. 

Nyota blinks the tears away and sets her jaw again. “I sent the letter. I found it and read it and I could not stand to watch you destroy yourself anymore so I sent it. I don’t regret it.”

The look she gives him after admitting this is one that seems to be daring him to get angry and fight back. He doesn’t dare say anything besides, “Why wouldn’t you just talk to me first.”

She lets go of his arms finally and lets out a watery laugh. “Because your my best friend, Leo. We haven’t really talked in a while but we both know you’re the best friend I have and I would have let you out of it.”

Leo glances over at Spock, who has now procured a rag and is holding it over his nose. He nods at Leo seriously. Leo wraps his arms around Nyota comfortingly, trying to convey all the appreciation and comfort that he owes her for everything. She could have told Jim, she could have done so much but she didn’t, not because she didn’t care about Jim, but because she remained loyal to Leo even after he pushed everyone on the planet away. 

And now even after everything that he put her through, she still wants to help him fix it. Despite all of the problems he’s caused her, Nyota Uhura still wants to help him. Still wants to be his friend.

It’s the exact opposite of what he thought would happen, counterintuitive to every single one of his basic instincts and his knowledge of human nature based on past experience.

People aren’t abandoning ship. 

They’re helping him bail out the water.

“Thank you. I don’t deserve this.” He pulls away from her.

Nyota shoves him a little. “Don’t be stupid. You deserve so much. Maybe not after the last year or two, but you are a good person, Leonard McCoy.”

“Nyota is correct. Your past actions, though some have been questionable, do reveal a greatness about your character.” Spock adds, having finally stymied the bleeding. “I am willing to forgive the violence, if you can forgive the infringement upon your privacy that was perpetrated by sending that letter.”

“I thought we already agreed that was Ny’s fault, Spock.” Leo smiles a little and Nyota lets out a noise of indignation.   
“I was trying to help, asshole!”

-

A week later, Leonard is sitting there when Nyota picks up the phone with wide eyes. He knows who it is solely based on her reaction to reading the caller ID.

It has to be Jim, it just has to be. There isn’t a single person in Nyota Uhura’s life that has been able to make her scared. He’s pretty sure this is the only time he’s actually seen fear from the woman. 

“Jim?” She speaks quickly, and Leo can practically feel the anxiety radiating off of her. Hell, some of it is his own. “Jim are you okay?”

Leo tenses up. Jim swore never to speak to them again and if he’s calling- Leo doesn’t even want to think about what could be wrong. 

“No you aren’t” She says coolly and knowingly. It doesn’t calm any of Leo’s fears. 

She listens to Jim’s response and breaths through her nose. She takes a moment to collect herself before saying, “I know. I think you should read it.”

Leo realizes what must have happened and he punches himself for not thinking of it before. Of course Jim freaked out when he received a letter from his ex husband. Of course he didn’t know what to do.

People call Nyota when they don’t know what to do.

She stays on the phone for a minute more, not talking at all, before she puts it down and rubs a hand over her eyes. “I suppose you know what that was?” She says with a strained voice.

“He got the letter?” Leo asks even though he already knows the answer.

“He got the letter.” She takes her hand away from her face and finally faces him. “I’m so sorry, Leo. I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

He waves her off and stands to go to the kitchen and get water for himself, a beer for her. “Stop apologizing, dammit. It’s fine. He knows, so what? Nothing I can do now.” He tries to speak in a way that will make even himself believe that he’s fine with this.

“It’s not fine!” She shouts. “It’s not fine that you had to deal with all of this!” She stomps over to him and slams her hand on the counter. “Your dad died and then you had Jim and it seemed like it would be fine but Jim kept trying to leave, kept looking for a reason. I should have known you’d give him one eventually.” She waves her hands around. “I should have known a lot of things, and I should have stopped a lot of things but I didn’t, I couldn’t make myself do it and I will never stop regretting that, so don’t you go being nice to me. Don’t say it’s alright or that you’re fine because you’re not. Stop trying to be strong when we all know you’re broken.”

Leo stares in shock at her, eyes wide, as he lets the cup run over with water. He curses at himself and shuts the faucet off. “Stop.” He says hoarsely.

“Stop what?”

“Stop caring. Stop blaming yourself. Stop being such a good friend. I don’t know, just stop!” He roars at her and she jumps back slightly.

They stand in tense silence for several minutes, neither of them wanting to be the first to break it. Leo wonders briefly if it will ever be over, the constant feeling like he’s done something terrible to everyone around him.

What finally breaks the silence is Nyota’s phone going off. She grabs it and when she reads who it is, she looks at him significantly and turns it on speakerphone. “Jim? Are you alright?”

“I don’t really know, Ny.” Jim’s voice comes through the phone broken and sad. Leo holds his breath, not wanting the other man to hear him.

“Did you read it?” She asks with trepidation.

“Yeah. I read it.”

“And?”

“I’m still thinking.” He sighs and Leo can practically feel Jim’s brain working on overdrive. When Jim thinks about something, he thinks about it hard.

“Are you going to call Leonard?” She locks eyes with Leo when she asks this, communicating that this is merely a way to give him some warning.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what I would do if I heard his voice.” He admits.

“You should think about it.”

“Ny?” Jim suddenly sounds much quieter, like he’s almost ashamed of what he’s going to say next. “Do you think he meant it? What he said in the letter, I mean.”

Nyota arches an eyebrow and Leo nods rapidly. “I think Leo’s done with lying.”

“Okay. I have to go.” Jim breathes out a small laugh. “Can I call you later?”

“Sure, Jim.” Nyota smiles to herself. “Bye.”

“Bye.” The line goes dead and Leo finally lets himself breathe.

Nyota smiles at him and he can tell that she’s relieved. Relieved that Jim is willing to talk to her, that he wants to talk to her again. She’s not going to lose him. “I think he’s going to be okay, Leo. I don’t think you ruined him.”

“What a surprise that is. I ruin most things.”

Nyota shakes her head and starts to speak but is interrupted by Leo’s phone ringing. They both know who it is and Leo’s fingers twitch towards it but he doesn’t pick up, not ready to put himself through trying to talk to him.

It rings and rings and rings but he doesn’t pick up. Finally, it goes silent. Nyota stares at him and he wants to bury his face in his hands and sleep for a solid month. 

Leo’s simply exhausted after everything.

His phone chirps with a missed call and a new voice mail. He stares at it for a long time before finally choosing to press play. He turns the volume up and lets Nyota hear it too. 

Jim breathes into the phone for a good few seconds before finally speaking in a voice that wobbles and wavers in a way that Jim Kirk’s voice rarely does. “Hey, Bones.” 

Leo’s stomach does backflips at a fucking nickname.

“I got your letter. I just thought you should know.” Jim sighs. “I almost didn’t read it, you know? I was going to throw it away and never think about you again but I couldn’t do it.” He goes silent and Leo hangs onto the moment, not ready for it to be over. “Thank you. You’ve given me something to think about.”

Leo sighs out relief that Jim doesn’t hate him for it. “Don’t call back just yet. I-I need time.” Jim finishes and the message ends.

Leo and Nyota stare at each other for a long while before she smiles softly and puts her hand on his arm. “Promise me something, Leo?”

“Yeah?” Leo honestly would give her anything at this point. She got Jim to speak to him again.

“Three months. Promise me that you’ll speak to him again in the next three months.”


	19. Chapter 19

Jim spends the first month sleeping, mostly.

He writes when he can’t sleep and he sleeps when he can’t write. In between those two things, his mother takes him places. She says she needs a companion but he knows she thinks he needs it more than she does.

It’s almost sweet, but he really is just tired. He wants nothing more than to simply curl up and work on his novel and sleep.

His novel takes a new shape the more he writes it. What started out as the story of a rebel fighting for her cause turns into the story of someone who loses everything but still finds a way to live and go forward. It’s completely different from his previous science fiction adventures, with this one taking place on Earth during the 20th century, but he finds himself writing with greater intention than ever before.

He realizes it’s his story if he was a young woman during the great depression. Which he most certainly isn’t.

The second month finds him leaving the house almost voluntarily. He decides he might as well start going out flying with Chris again. That of course leads to going to Home Depot (This throws Jim for a spin. Christopher Pike never was the home improvement type but apparently marriage does things to a person) to pick up supplies for various projects.

He doesn’t really know what to look for, of course. He’s a writer, not exactly a “let’s go build something” kind of guy.

It’s on one of these trips that Chris and Jim actually speak to each other for the first time since Winona and Chris visited Atlanta. It’s unexpected, to say the least.

“How are you feeling, James?” Chris says it like it’s just dumb small talk, so Jim replies in kind.

“Pretty good. It’s hot today, though.” He pulls at the collar of his long sleeve henley. Iowa gets hot, for sure. Just not normally 87 degrees in the beginning of September. “Atlanta was bad enough. This is just torture, is what it is.”

Chris stops walking and levels him with narrowed eyes. “That’s not what I was talking about, Jim. How are you actually feeling?”

Jim’s stomach drops to his feet and he can’t say he didn’t see this coming eventually. “Come on, Chris. We’re in the middle of Home Depot. Isn’t this more of a Menards conversation?” Jokes always used to work for getting him out of uncomfortable situations.

“Cut it out, Jim. Just answer the question.” Chris looks like he’s about five seconds away from bursting a blood vessel in his face. Jim wants to hate him for doing this to him in public, but they both know it’s the only way it could have happened. Jim can’t storm away when it could draw attention. “I’m angry.”

Chris doesn’t respond, just raises an eyebrow at him. His folded arms and straight posture are clearly a prompt to continue.

“I wake up and I’m furious at the world.” Jim swallows thickly. “I go around and try to do things but I’m so angry, I can’t even see. I’m not even exactly sure why I’m angry. All I know is that I hate him. God, I hate Leonard McCoy so much.” Jim finishes and he can feel his face go red.

He’d never said it out loud before. Jim had never admitted the fact that he hated Leo but it came out so easily, he can’t believe it hadn’t happened before. It’s true. He hates Leo so much he feels like crying sometimes. “I hate him.” He repeats like a revelation. 

It almost feels like weight off his chest.

“Why?” Chris only gives him one word. One word that brings all the weight back and makes him really think about things. One word to make him question this whole vendetta. All of the sleeping and writing and self pity. All of the hatred towards the universe.

When he thinks about it, he doesn’t really know. He can’t pinpoint an exact reason to hate Leo. He just knows that he wakes up with it every morning and falls asleep to the pounding of it inside his brain every night. He doesn’t know why he hates Leo because it isn’t the reason it should be. Not the obvious reason of “he lied to me” but something he can’t really identify.

“He made me love him over and over again and then it didn’t matter.” It comes out of his mouth but he doesn’t remember even thinking it. The sounds come out but it doesn’t feel like it came from him. “It didn’t matter at all.”

“Are you sure about that?” Chris’ voice remains level and Jim can tell that he still talks to Jim’s ex-husband.

It shouldn’t hurt like it does. It almost feels like a betrayal. Like Chris should hate Leo just as much as Jim does. “Are you sure it meant nothing, cuz I think it definitely meant something to him. Still does.”

Jim opens and closes his mouth a few times before realizing that he probably looks like a fish. And they’re still in the middle of Home Depot. They came here for a new drill bit, not for a heart to heart. “Why would he lie to me if it meant something to him?” 

He really doesn’t want to talk about it, but he can’t seem to stop it. 

 “It meant too much to him, Jim. You meant too much, so he had to try to keep you from leaving.” Chris smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You and I both know Leonard Horatio McCoy isn’t the most rational man when it comes to you.”

Jim realizes in the middle of a home improvement store that he’s never been really good at identifying his emotions.

-

The third month after the letter leaves him confused. He travels around, giving talks at various colleges because his management and publicity team decide that maybe it’s time to put him back in the public eye once more.

It starts out up in New York and the surrounding area, talking to the best and brightest of the country about his creative process and he can tell at least sixty percent of them are only thinking about the fact that he has a scar on his forehead and that he can’t answer some questions because he just doesn’t know.

Most of his memory comes back, but there are some things he just can’t get back. He doubts he ever will.

Like the fact that he wanted to leave Leo first. That part comes back, but the reason why doesn’t. He begins to think maybe there wasn’t a reason.

Maybe he’d just wanted to run and it drove Leo crazy.

He remembers the times in fleeting moments of intense emotion. He remembers unbelievable happiness at his wedding. He remembers desperation when he and Leo slept together for the first time.

Mostly, he starts to remember the tugging at his core to run, just run. Leave Leo behind and start over somewhere new. Buy a new bike and ride it until he reached the ocean.

It was before the drinking, before any fighting, before anything happened. The feeling he remembers feels like when Sam left, when Frank was still beating him, when he just needed to get out and go somewhere.

The same feeling that he still gets, but now it feel like it has a definite destination, and that scares him because he knows where it is.

He speaks at Georgia Tech one October afternoon and it’s hot, of course, but that’s not why he sweats. He sweats and frets because this is it. This is the city where it all went down, this is the school where it all started. 

This is where he wants to run to but it still doesn’t feel right because he just needs that one person.

He boards a plane to head to the west coast for some more talks. San Francisco first before Sacramento then down to LA. A week of signings and reading and talking at college students who only attend for extra credit in their english courses.

He sits in his seat, one by the window, and he can’t help but think about how Leo hates window seats. He hates being able to see exactly how far off the ground they are and he always took an aisle seat.

Jim eyes the empty aisle seat next to him. He doubts it’ll be filled. Not many people flying from Atlanta to San Fran on a thursday afternoon.

Just when he’s about to pop in some headphones and settle in for the long flight, he hears a scuffle up near the bathroom. He sits up, always ready to see something possibly worth writing about.

What he sees definitely isn’t what he’s expecting. His mouth goes dry and he feels like he’s got airsickness before they’ve even given the safety spiels.

He was not expecting to see Leonard fighting with a flight attendant. Not even a little.

“I’m fine.”

“Sir, do you need a doctor?” The surprisingly firm young woman holds him by the arm and looks him in the eye. It’s obvious that she thinks he’s drunk off his mind.

Jim, of course, knows better. Judging by the look in Leo’s eye, he hasn’t had a drop to drink in at least a week, probably more. It catches him off guard that he can still remember this.

“I am a doctor, dammit!” Leo half speaks-half shouts at the woman. “I’m fine!”

“Please take your seat, sir.”

“I had a seat in the bathroom. A nice one without windows!” Leo exclaims and gestures at the open restroom.

“Take your seat.” The woman tightens her grip before letting go and straightening her skirt. “Thank you, sir.”

Leo’s shoulders slump in submission and Jim almost laughs out loud at how beat he looks. He stops himself, though. He wants to hate Leo.

He knows he can’t anymore when Leo sits in the seat next to him. He knows he can’t continue loathing the man he spent so long loving.

“I may throw up on you.” Leo blurts out. 

Jim chuckles. “I think these things are pretty safe, Bones.”

Leo’s head whips up. A glimmer of hope shines in his eye. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jim nods and grins at him. “It’s all fine.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here it is.

Leo knew from the moment he saw where his seat was that this would be an interesting flight. 

Of course this lead him to believe that the logical course of action would be to hide in the bathroom until he died or the plane landed. Whichever comes first. He honestly believed that it would be the death thing for a while.

Of course things never work out the way he wants them to. Flight attendants can be quite terrifying, it turns out. He struggles and he’d like to say that he put up a good fight, but he knows that it was half-assed at best.

So he sits in his seat next to Jim Kirk of all people. Honestly, the universe must absolutely despise him. He hates flying to begin with, and now he’s stuck next to a man who hates Leo more than anything else on the planet, probably.

Should be fun. “I may throw up on you.” He mumbles because it’s the only thing he can think to say and something obviously has to be said. They cannot sit in silence for five hours. 

“I think these things are pretty safe, Bones.” Jim actually laughs and smiles. Leo doesn’t look directly at him, but he can still see him, can still see the way Jim’s eyes scrunch up slightly with a half smile that he doesn’t particularly want to let out.

Leo finally turns to look at him. He turns his head too fast, of course. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jim actually smiles at Leo and he feels like fucking singing. “It’s all fine.”

After that, they fall into a slightly less tense but still emotionally charged silence. The very same flight attendants that dragged him out of the restroom do their safety speech. One of them shoots him pointed looks when they mention the part about keeping your safety belt fastened when the signs are on.

He feels more than a little bit chastened.

The plane starts moving, picking up speed along with his pulse. He can feel it pounding in his chest, skin heating up. He feels the need to run around and maybe punch something. The back of his neck itches and oh is that something in his eye?

The front of the plane angles upward and Leo feels his stomach lurch downward. He clutches the armrests, knuckles white. Not that he can see them due to the fact that his eyes have managed to squeeze themselves shut. He breathes through his nose and prays to god that Jim has headphones in or something. Anything to keep him from noticing how terrified Leo is.

When he feels a hand on his arm, he knows Jim has obviously noticed. How could he not?

“Remember our honeymoon?” Jim speaks low to him. “We flew out to London. It was so beautiful, Bones.”

It kills Leo to hear it. It kills him to know that Jim remembers now. Jim knows. It kills him that Jim can just talk about it all like it’s nothing, like he didn’t live it.

Like it’s not all in the past. “You held my hand. You read to me.” He whispers in a pained voice. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut, even if Jim’s touch does calm him somewhat.

Jim rubs light circles into his bicep with his thumb. He hums a little. “I think that’s my favorite memory, Bones.” 

Leo breathes in sharply. “Please stop, Jim. We’re in the air now. I can handle it.” He shakes his ex-husband off and folds in on himself. Of all the things he needs from Jim, it isn’t to hear how much he loves the memories of their marriage. A marriage that went to shit far too fast. 

Leo fucked up and he doesn’t feel like being reminded of exactly what he fucked up.

“Bones.” It sounds almost like a question, and almost like a demand. Leo doesn’t look at him. He frowns and tries to make himself impossibly smaller. He doesn’t look at anything, doesn’t do anything that would make Jim think he’s paying attention. He cannot afford to care anymore. 

He can practically hear Uhura shouting in his head about talking to Jim within three months, but he shuts it out. She hasn’t lived this. She’s got Spock. They’re perfect in every way that a couple can be. He’s messed up and there’s nothing he can even think to do at this point, promises be damned. “Leave it, Jim. Just leave it.”

Jim, being Jim, doesn’t stop. “No. Please, just talk to me.” He replaces his hand on Leo. “I need you to hear me and listen. I’m getting it all back, Bones. Piece by piece I’m getting it back.” Jim sighs. “I remember the good things, like our honeymoon, but I also remember what I felt like. It’s not vivid memories, but I can remember feeling like I needed to get out. I remember wanting to leave you, Bones.”

Leo pries his eyes open and stares at Jim, wondering where he could possibly be going with this. “Don’t beat around the bush, Jim. Just say what you want to say.” Even after four months apart from each other, he can still remember every little thing about Jim. It kills him some days.

Jim laughs something short and loud. He looks around the cabin at the other passengers. Luckily, it’s mostly empty. “What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t all you, Bones. It was me too. If I had been in my right mind, I wouldn’t have pushed you away for breaking a stupid promise I made you make when you were recovering, for Christ’s sake! I was crazy, Bones.” He shakes his head. “We were both out of control for so long. I just wanted it to be your fault, for some reason.” Jim tightens his grip on Leo’s arm. His voice is lower when he speaks and it cracks slightly. “I just want to be able to talk to you again, Bones. I miss you so much.” 

Leo has to take a few moments to even be able to breathe. For the first time in months, someone is saying it’s not his fault and he almost believes it. He almost believes that maybe he wasn’t alone in ruining everything. “I miss you too, Jim. I’m just scared.”

“You’re scared of flying.” Jim states simply. “Yet here you are.”

Leo stares at Jim for a good minute before laughing. He feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. “Yeah I suppose I am here. Dammit, Jim, who do you have to make it so hard to be myself?”

“Oh please.” Jim waves him off. “This is who you are. You aren’t a big mean scary doctor like everyone thinks, Bones. I should know, we were married. For three years.”

Leo shakes his head. “No. Two years and eight months. We were married for two years and eight months.” He fiddles with the edge of his sweater. “Happy anniversary, by the way.”

Jim’s hand finds Leonard’s and it doesn’t feel as wrong as he supposes it probably should. Jim smiles and it stays this time, doesn’t slide off in an attempt to hide it. He smiles and looks Leo in the eyes. Suddenly he remembers why blue is his favorite color. “Happy anniversary, Bones. Though I’m not exactly sure if it counts now.”

Leo shrugs. “Does it really matter?”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

Just like that, four years left behind. Not forgotten, no. Remembered for the most part, but Leo feels himself move past the Jim that he used to hold, the Jim that he used to love so dearly it hurt him.

He has a Jim in front of him. It’s a different Jim, yet so much the same. Same hair, same eyes, same humor, hell even same memories. The only difference is that this Jim is wiser than the other could ever hope to be, Leo can tell. “Why are you going to San Fran, Bones?”

“Wow, Mr Subject Change, if you must know, I’m moving. Starting over new with a job at San Fransisco General.” Leo smiles a little at the thought of really starting again. Part of him wants to know if Jim would ever be willing to come along for the ride this time around.

Jim, much to Leo’s surprise, cackles outright. He claps. “Are you serious?”

“What?”

“After my lecture, I’m going to be looking at apartments.” Jim fixes him with a resolute stare. “I’m moving to San Francisco.”

The universe must really love Leonard McCoy. “Call us serendipity.” 

Jim nods in agreement, then he suddenly notices something. “Where’s all your stuff, if you’re moving?”

Leo shrugs. “I got rid of most of it. My clothes fit into a suitcase and I’m going to buy new furniture out there.” He can feel Jim about to ask, so he responds to the unasked question, “I couldn’t keep all that stuff, Jim. It felt like ghosts hanging around. I kept some things that Nyota is sending out, but I had to get rid of it. I needed to move on, Jim.”

The rest of the flight passes by quickly. A few minutes of talking about the bay area before Leo starts to nod off and Jim quiets himself. Leo ends up on Jim’s shoulder, sound asleep while he reads. It feels familiar and new.

Leo wakes up and they disembark in silence, only the shuffling of feet and the grunts of other passengers to add any sort of soundtrack. It’s not until after they have both picked up their luggage from the carousel that Jim speaks.

“So we’re here.” He shuffles his feet from side to side. “In San Fransisco.”

“Is that where we are?” Leo responds with sarcasm because that’s all he really knows how to do.

They stare at each other for a time that was probably much shorter than it seemed. Suddenly, Jim says, “I have time before my lecture.” at the same time Leo blurts out, “Let’s go get lunch.”

Leo returns the happy look Jim is giving him before stepping forward with more courage than he’s felt in a long time. Possibly ever. He puts a hand lightly on Jim’s hip and kisses him chastely in the middle of the crowded airport. 

Jim blinks at him a few times before he positively lights up. “Hi.” He whispers.

“Hello to you too, Jim.”

For the first time in years, possibly his whole life, Leo doesn’t feel like he has to worry about one thing. Whatever happens, it’ll be fine. He can handle it.

After all, it’s only the beginning, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot even kind of begin to express what I am feeling right now.
> 
> This fic has been my entire life for the past few months. I got the idea while I was in the shower and debated even starting it for the longest time. I never meant for it to turn into what it did and I am honestly very pleasantly surprised by it all.
> 
> More than anything, the absolutely wonderful support that I get from all of you out there in internetland is astounding. Without all of you, I honestly probably would have abandoned this project midway through January. I never expected it to get the attention it has, and I still cannot believe the sheer number of people that actually have been following this. I stand all amazed.
> 
> I, of course, have to thank all of my wonderful friends who have played support team for me throughout the process (tumblrs in parenthesis): Cara (thehawkwardpinenut), Jules (ussmckirk), Reagan (jimsbones), NATE (dammitdarlin), and of course Mustard (thomasmarsbars). You are all amazing and I admire your willingness to listen to my constant babbling and ranting.
> 
> More than anything else, I want people to remember that this story is about honesty. Honesty with the ones you love and (almost more importantly) honesty with yourself. I've had some serious issues with that this past year and I feel as if this story has really allowed me to work through them.
> 
> So thank you for allowing me to post my little therapy project.
> 
> I love each and every single one of you unconditionally,  
> Anneliese

**Author's Note:**

> feedback appreciated!  
> tumblr: fabtrek


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